Technology is an enabling force that can streamline business processes and provide real-time decision support. It needs to evolve with your business, and we can help.
Our expertise includes:
Reporting
Data management
Price management
System integrations
Build or buy decisions
Third party evaluation & deployment
“As the former President of Ben E. Keith Foods, and a founding DMA Board member, I’ve known and worked with Jim Szatkowski for more than 15 years. Jim has always impressed me as a foodservice industry thought leader, a technology expert who understands how to leverage its potential to help our industry evolve for the future, and a true team player. Jim is one of the people you look forward to working with on a project.”
Mike Roach, Ben E. Keith Foods, Retired
Top 5 Spend Reporting Issues
Missing transactional data
The movement of invoice data internally within the distributor's systems or externally from the distributor to third party systems, is a prime source of inaccuracies.
Transfer failures due to system issues on the part of the sender or receiver, interrupted transmissions resulting in only partial data being sent, or system bugs can easily go undetected.
Validating spend reporting through independent data sources can be a critical safety net.
Missing store locations
Store lists are constantly evolving with new unit openings, transfers from one franchisee to another, transfers from one distributor warehouse to another, all of which can contribute to inaccurate reporting.
It is essential to develop a process to audit your distributor or third-party reporting service to ensure your store list is up to date in any external systems.
Inaccurate or incomplete cross-references
Information that is custom to your brand such as general ledger codes, store numbers, store ownership, and distributor item codes that are mapped to master product codes, are often maintained by your distributor or third-party reporting service. All of these linkages are vital for robust reporting but maintaining them in a timely manner will ensure a higher degree of accuracy.
Credit memos
Credit memos are a routine part of the business but sometimes there can be unintended consequences as to how credits get entered into the system. Adjustments for pricing errors should never decrease the number of cases shipped but we have seen that happen, involving hundreds of cases in one instance alone.
Keeping a watchful eye on credit transactions and knowing what to look for can help catch these errors.
Timing
The processing of large volumes of data is highly dependent on various systems and processes that must work on a specific schedule, in a specific order. Your distributor and/or third-party reporting provider will have painstakingly worked out the timing of these processes, but things can break and disrupt this carefully orchestrated workflow.
