Salient typically starts with detailed sales transactions as a foundation. We then add purchasing, inventory, market (from IRI or Nielsen), and any other type of data you may want to track from the manufacturing process, or your internal systems to arrive at true customer profitability. While our origins are in Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG), our tools and techniques are generally very portable with only minor customization of our pre-packed industry templates.

Our inventory analysis templates help managers identify potential distribution, supplier, or store-level execution issues. Users can adjust their focus to look at various aggregate levels by customer and product (such as by Channel, Market Area, Chain, Banner, Supplier, Brand, Package, or SKU) to determine the frequency and value of potential order shorts or out-of-stocks.

As always, any analysis’ timeframe can be adjusted by an end-user while viewing to focus on specific periods or look at patterns over a longer timeframe by Month, Week, Day, or any user-defined Business Day calendar

Often there are off-invoice dollars associated with sales that should adjust the revenue or cost for groups of products and groups of stores.

Salient has developed a Utility so these rebates don’t just sit on the GL but can actually be related back to the products and categories they relate to for better tracking store and SKU level profitability. This utility can ‘spread’ based on lump sum, allocate an amount per unit, on a percentage, or handle other spread types.

Easily track new product introductions with Salient’s purpose-built exception trend charts. Identify distinct outlets that are purchasing each week, how many have purchased at least once but are no longer buying, and which are the non-buyer customers. Drilling into any date reveals a listing of buyers and non-buyers. The standard exception grid option provides Percent Distribution for each item that can be drilled to a list of ‘non-buyer’ accounts to target.