The Beretta Group Turns To XTEL For Automating Its Commercial Processes

Dec. 22, 2010 - PRLog -- For six generations, Salumificio Fratelli Beretta has been making cold cuts in the Italian tradition, constantly innovating to meet the diverse needs of ever-changing markets and consumers. Founded in 1812, it successfully turned itself from a local small business into an industrial business. In the '70s, it blazed new trails that, in unison with the growth of large distribution, led it to be the first in Italy to sell pre-portioned cold cuts. In the '90s, it developed foreign markets; and in the early 2000s, it diversified its production beyond cold cuts, creating the Piatti Freschi Italia company with the French giant  Fleury Michon . Today Beretta has 1047 direct employees, produces 78,350 tons and has 16 plants. It's become a true powerhouse, preferred by more than 10 million households (source: GFK panel service) who buy its well-known brands, Beretta, Zero24, Wuber and Viva la Mamma Beretta
The company saw a need to improve its solutions for automating sales processes and decided to look to XTEL, a software and services company specialized in European consumer product companies.
Beretta equipped itself with the Sales Execution solutions, for controlling stores, Sales Promo for managing promotions for trade, and Sales Agreement for monitoring contracts with customers in the modern supply chain.
Adopting Sales Execution is part of a strategic plan designed to optimally control the large distribution channel, which is of central importance to Beretta. The 25 activators, new positions recently added to its commercial organization, will be equipped with handheld devices on which the XTEL solution will be installed to help them optimize visits to customers. The solution will support performing all operations in the store, from monitoring promotions, verifying assortments, facings, listings and then providing analysis tools that will help new activators to verify on-site the variation of primary values over time, and, as a result, to act promptly to correct any divergences. Headquarters will always be able to count on up-to-date analysis of information gathered in the stores to initiate new commercial actions to improve its products' commercial performance.
In this context, promotions play a crucial role in the performance of Beretta products on the large distribution channel. Its intense promotional activity required adopting a solution specialized for the specific area of consumer goods. The XTEL solution will be used to set promotional guidelines, create new actions in line with business objectives and control different variables of the promotional process, such as duration, time between the promotions, and promotional amounts, all within an exact work flow that is authorized and controlled.
Lastly, the Sales Agreement will be able to calculate awards and contributions set by contracts. Sales Agreement supports and automates all management processes for negotiations, providing the tools necessary to manage the specifics of contractual relations with the large distribution channel.
The modules of the Sales Master One suite will be integrated with the Oracle-JD Edwards ERP, currently in use at Salumificio Fratelli Beretta.
Tarcisio Zacchetti of Beretta said, "XTEL immediately seemed the right service provider for us, both for its ability to grasp the issues related to the relationship with the large distribution channel and for its expertise specifically in our field ".

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XTEL solutions offer the right capabilities to manage critical sales processes, link strategy to execution, increase the effectiveness of comercial resourses, reduce time-to-market and, therefore, to build a sustainable competitive advantage.