Our continuous innovations, realised across 10 releases over the past three years, makes it easy for CG companies to plan, promote, engage, sell and deliver on every channel.
To celebrate our 10th product release, Aforza is thrilled to share 10 innovations that are shaping a new future in Consumer Goods, by enabling companies to gain precision across all routes to market and improve sales performance. Discover how our customers are changing retail and trade promotion experiences with Aforza’s industry-leading innovations:
1. Deliver intuitive sales experiences, both online and offline
Today’s sellers require more intuitive and tailored guidance during customer visits in order to stand out from the competition. Aforza empowers sellers to perform their work easily with everything they require to manage accounts, conduct tasks during visits, and capture orders seamlessly. Customers also have access to the same core capabilities to help themselves from a self-service web portal. An easy and intuitive sales experience helps CG manufacturers reduce visit costs while increasing customer satisfaction.
2. Operate freely with truly offline mobile
Sales teams don’t miss a beat with Aforza’s Mobile app. Sellers gain access to a rich suite of capabilities to conduct successful store visits and effortlessly capture orders with a powerful mobile app, that’s available offline and without internet connectivity! The app provides step-by-step instructions to conduct all required activities during store visits including capturing orders in addition to conducting surveys & audits, and product detailing with access to the latest product materials. Field teams never need to worry about connectivity and can work freely, from anywhere!
3. Unite teams with a single, field-friendly customer-360
Bring everyone together by unifying all customer insights into a single and field-friendly CRM solution. Aforza eliminates information silos and helps Consumer Goods companies deliver a unified customer 360-degree profile that features a complete view of previous activities including orders, promotions and more! Connecting all customer data on one platform eliminates business and process complexity to exponentially boost sales productivity!
4. Guide sellers to deliver perfect business experiences
Aforza Guides brings science back to the art of selling. Sales managers can design and launch prescriptive workflows for sales teams that outline all tasks to be performed during visits – such as merchandising, customer onboarding, audits and surveys. These guided sales journeys are fully available offline and can be assigned to specific customer segments based on any attribute (such as VIP customers, proximity to events, or anything else!) Sales managers even have instant, real-time visibility into visit outcomes to continuously monitor and perfect sales performance.
5. Segment and target accounts with prescriptive sales motions
With Aforza, businesses can create powerful account profiles based on dynamic attributes (i.e. outlet footfall, sales volume tiers, competitive presences, proximity to popular locations and more!) by using advanced account segmentation. Sales leaders can apply highly tailored pricing and assortment plans to these account groupings. Sales performance across grouped accounts can be tracked and measured in order to target like-customers with outcome-oriented sales promotions that grow shopping carts.
6. Price every order with precision and capture them from anywhere
Aforza delivers unified pricing and discounting across all channels which means that every order is priced accurately, in real-time. An industry-leading product catalogue is designed to meet the unique requirements such as product bundles, discounts, and units of measure. When capturing orders, sellers are seamlessly guided through promotion and cart configurations which are fully optimised for an offline tablet experience with the same prices, discounts, cart summaries and order completion workflows. Unified and dynamic pricing, available across all channels, protects sales margins while helping sellers to easily capture orders, regardless of where they are placed.
7. Connect sales planning to execution
Aforza offers a full lifecycle trade execution experience, from promotion planning to order capture and audit compliance. Companies can plan and launch unified commercial policies for customers that are fully connected with closed loop insights into their performance. As a result, commercial leaders are able to gain confidence that sales strategies are getting executed with immediate insights to know what’s working in the field.
8. Fully integrate digital asset management
It’s never been more important to equip sellers with the right content, in the right moment and optimise trade promotion performance. Aforza’s Digital Asset Management offers a centralised, secure and scalable cloud platform for digital assets that are available across every channel, including mobile offline. Authorised users can review, edit and share consistent data to effectively manage digital content at scale. Sellers gain instant access to the latest promotional material from anywhere, which transforms selling experiences and grows revenue.
9. Close-the-loop with intelligent & actionable insights
To grow sustainably, CG companies need immediate insights that allow them to identify a problem or opportunity, and address it immediately. Aforza provides intelligent and actionable analytics that connect the loop between sales planning and execution. Business leaders gain instant visibility into business performance such as promotion optimization, product catalogue activity (i.e. SKU movement or out-of-stocks), and budget & spend investments. As sales teams work in the field, performance data is updated in real-time.
Powerful AI provides immediate recommendations such as suggesting priority store visits or advising which promotions to run for certain customers. Commercial teams are able to rapidly act on intelligent insights which accelerates time to market and improves the return on trade investments.
And, whenever you have a “top 10” list, you always leave something very special to finish on…
10. Execute intelligent omnichannel trade promotions
Today’s dynamic market has increased the pressure for many Consumer Goods companies to rapidly trial and adapt their trade promotion strategies while ensuring that essential brands are available through the right channels and at the right price. Aforza’s omnichannel Trade Promotion solution brings a powerful planning dashboard to commercial teams which helps them target the right customers with visibility into promotion performance including inventory levels, sales order insights, budget & funds, plans and objectives. Immediate insights into the performance of a single promotion, including its profit & loss, supports real-time in-flight changes to maximise trade promotion effectiveness.
Ever-changing consumer preferences and volatile market forces mean that it’s never been more important to confidently strengthen your sales strategy and execution, across every channel. Aforza is committed to helping Consumer Goods manufacturers sustainably evolve and grow into the future. Our rapid industry innovations continue to connect strategy to execution, empower sellers with intuitive experiences, and bring front-line intelligence to commercial planning.