According to David Benitez, CEO of KPI Online customer Intelligent Mexican Marketing (IMM) his company is not a snack food distribution company. They’re a company that introduces and builds brands in the marketplace, and had to create their own distribution network because none existed for this market category.

The strategy seems to have worked. IMM has grown from only four delivery trucks three years go, to 64 trucks today.

Benitez said that to achieve that level of growth, he had to become an information company. KPI Online was instrumental in helping him achieve this.

Wholesaler as Information Broker

IMM started in 2007 with the goal of introducing Hispanic consumer products from Mexico into the U.S. market.

Various companies in Mexico provided him with the consumer brands, but it was IMM’s responsibility to build the brands and distribute the products. They started in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area with four trucks, delivering snack foods to local gas stations, convenience stores and small grocery stores in Hispanic neighborhoods. They also helped these small retailers with their marketing efforts, with attractive point-of-purchase displays and other promotional ideas.

However, IMM CEO David Benitez had ambitious plans.

Benitez wanted IMM to grow quickly.

Even though IMM was a small company, Benitez realized it had to behave just like a large company, and act within a “supply chain management” paradigm. IMM had to become the coordinator of an extended supply chain that included the Mexico-based manufacturers, IMM as marketer and distributor, and the small retailers.

Benitez saw that the only way to do this was with the strategic use of information.

“We decided to become an information company instead of a bricks-and-mortar company,” Benitez said.

They have now grown to 64 trucks, covering the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, Houston, San Antonio, Austin and Oklahoma City.

How did he achieve this, and what does it mean to become an information-based company?

In order to grow, Benitez had to track and measure data, and report the data back to the manufacturers and the retailers.

IMM did the following:

1. Delivered regular reports on a timely basis to the manufacturers in Mexico with specific information about brand performance, sales by geography and sales by retailer. This enabled the manufacturers to provide feedback and improve planning.
2. IMM sales reps utilized these same reports during regular meetings with retailers to find out why certain stores weren’t selling certain items, correct falling sales before things got out of hand, and help retailers improve sales for slow moving items.
3. Armed their route drivers with hand-held wireless devices to enhance information gathering and on-the-spot invoicing. Information from the hand-helds were downloaded nightly and were included in daily reports so Benitez and management could see, in real-time, how brands, sales reps and retail outlets were doing.

As IMM grew,  their ability to keep up with their increasing reporting needs became more difficult.  They were using spreadsheets, and had to spend hours, even days, building complex reports with pivot tables, data from their QuickBooks accounting system which they later replaced with SAP Business One, and their hand-held system, formulas, dependencies and other complexities.

According to Sales Director Ricardo Villarreal, building reports with Excel became “a pain.”

Subscribing to KPI Online

IMM subscribed to KPI Online’s online service to automate their reporting and data analysis process.

They decided to use KPI Online for the following reasons:

• The ability to connect from their financial systems and hand-held management system for automated nightly uploads so reports could be available in real-time every day.
• The online capabilities of KPI Online, that allowed them to check sales data, inventory data, cost and expense data wherever they were and on any device.
• The ease-of-use that enabled them, with point and click simplicity, to view reports and then drill down into details to see why certain brands weren’t moving as fast, or who the best performing stores were, or which sales reps needed more training.
• The ability to export reports into Excel or PowerPoint, send them via email or share them via web interfaces with their customers as well as their manufacturers in Mexico.

Villarreal and Benitez noticed the difference immediately. What used to take hours or days now took only minutes.

“If I have a meeting with a client in one hour, all I need to do is bring my wireless device, pull up the KPI Online dashboard, and show my customers their sales, what product is moving, what isn’t.”

Benitez said that the ability to track data on a daily basis, measure company performance, and share this data with his suppliers and retailers had a magical effect.

“You can’t improve what you can’t measure,” said Benitez. “Becoming an information-based company helped us grow faster than we could have done if we hadn’t implemented this process.”

“With KPI Onlne, we were able to identify tremendous opportunities that we weren’t able to identify before we had implemented it,” Benitez said.

Becoming an information-based company is not for everybody.  It requires a company culture change, an openness to expose yourself and your company to your employees, customers and suppliers. But just as a person training for a marathon gets better every time she times herself and shares that time with her peers or her coach, this small but growing wholesale distribution companies is doing the same.

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