Objective:
A renowned player in the confectionery and retail distribution industry needed a robust system to manage, distribute, and track promotional campaigns for their wide range of products across retail and indirect sales channels. The goal was to build a centralized platform to streamline promotion creation and distribution, improving accuracy, transparency, and time-to-market for retail promotions.
Challenges:
- No centralized platform for managing and tracking promotions across multiple channels.
- Complex account hierarchy involving supermarkets and indirect customers made distribution inefficient.
- Manual handling of data transfers between internal systems and third-party tools.
- Lack of real-time visibility into promotion performance and campaign reach.
- Inconsistent user access and authentication processes across the application.
Solution:
- Promotion Lifecycle Management: Created a user-friendly web application to design, manage, and schedule chocolate promotions over defined periods.
- Account Hierarchy Integration: Enabled multi-tier account handling by structuring supermarkets as “Grandparent” accounts and downstream markets as indirect customers.
- System Interconnectivity: Established secure SFTP connections between the web application and HighRadius using OutSystems Forge components.
- Data Sync & Scheduling: Implemented a scheduled job to sync Carl RS data into SQL tables for timely and accurate reporting.
- Secure Authentication: Integrated Microsoft Entra (Azure AD) for seamless Single Sign-On (SSO) capabilities.
- Analytics Ready: Laid the groundwork for future Power BI integration to offer real-time insights into promotion performance.
Implementation:
- Developed using the OutSystems low-code platform, accelerating deployment and allowing for rapid iterations.
- Utilized KatPro SQL Server to manage structured promotional and customer data efficiently.
- Leveraged OutSystems Forge assets to establish SFTP-based connections with external finance systems like HighRadius.
- Built a scheduled integration job to pull data from Carl RS and update SQL tables regularly.
- Enforced enterprise-grade identity and access management using Microsoft Entra SSO.
- Designed a scalable system that can evolve to include analytics dashboards using Power BI.
Results:
- 60% faster promotion deployment through centralized and automated campaign workflows.
- Improved market coverage and tracking, ensuring all tiers of the distribution network received relevant promotions.
- Enhanced operational efficiency by automating data synchronization and eliminating manual file transfers.
- Secure and unified login experience with Microsoft Entra SSO, improving user adoption and reducing IT overhead.
- Future-ready infrastructure supporting real-time analytics and reporting enhancements.
Struggling to manage complex promotional campaigns across distributed markets?
We specialize in building intelligent, secure, and scalable promotion management platforms tailored to your industry’s needs. Schedule a strategy session with us to modernize your promotion workflows.