Case Study
Nestlé USA boosts visibility and efficiency with UNFI Insights™ powered by Crisp
Explore how Nestlé USA transformed UNFI data management, navigated complex distribution, and boosted its $300M business segment with actionable insights.
Situation
Wrestling with legacy limitations
Nestlé USA, a major food and beverage player in the global Nestlé enterprise, relies on distribution through partners like United Natural Foods, Inc. (NYSE:UNFI) to deliver its vast portfolio to key retailers nationwide. But before implementing the UNFI Insights platform, managing their expansive product portfolio (spanning 1500 SKUs) across multiple categories and brands presented challenges.
While an automated system pulled UNFI reports into an enterprise data repository, the siloed information required additional modeling to extract key insights, and often contained critical gaps. An additional hurdle, Nestlé’s UNFI vendor number encompasses data from other Nestlé organizations, like Nestlé Coffee Partners and Nestlé Health Sciences. This meant the team had to sift through hundreds of additional brands and product SKUs to locate the insights specific to their division.
Solution
Mastering data management
Nestlé USA’s adoption of UNFI Insights™ in the summer of 2023 marks a shift in its data management approach. The immediate resolution of long-standing issues, such as incomplete store-level information, including addresses, was a significant win. The data could then be realigned to Nestlé’s organizational structure providing tailored insights to individual sales teams, reducing the need for ad-hoc requests, and enhancing their effectiveness.
Next, the team spearheaded a Master Data Management (MDM) process with Crisp. This initiative, simple to achieve within the platform, involved aligning UNFI’s broad data with Nestlé USA’s internal reporting conventions. The result was the ability to filter out irrelevant products (like those from Nestlé Coffee Partners and Nestlé Health Sciences), and further support Nestlé USA’s “Bulletproof the Core” program, which focuses sales efforts on the top 20% of products that drive 80% of total sales.
Today, with UNFI Insights, Nestlé enjoys clean, easy-to-understand reports on each of their 1500 SKUs including weeks of supply-on-hand, year-over-year distribution, real-time visual heat maps for sales and inventory tracking, and more.
Results: Clarity achieved
- Saw immediate resolution of longstanding issues with incomplete data, ensuring accurate and reliable insights
- Enjoys accessible, real-time reporting across 1,500+ SKUs, eliminating manual data modeling and ad-hoc requests
- Aligned UNFI data with internal reporting structure through Master Data Management (MDM), fueling clear visibility for Nestlé USA’s $300M UNFI business segment
Favorite Insight:
Year-over-year distribution
Demonstrates growth across time periods, which is crucial for executive reporting.
“Aligning the UNFI data with our product hierarchy is one of the greatest enhancements we’ve made recently. It’s really set our team up for success.”
Hugo Lopez
Director of Nestlé USA for UNFI
Always be Data Ready with Crisp
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