BASE^® Technologies has been shortlisted for the Think Global Awards under the Digital Transformation Category

BASE^® Technologies used BASE^® Brands to create a data-led, multi-channel planning and analytics platform for Heineken. This platform was supported by expert consultancy to provide transparency for Heineken's marketing spend, and post-campaign management to figure out how to prove and improve ROI, resulting in a ROI increase of 100% in the last three years.

SITUATION

For many brands, shopper marketing is one of the most important channels available to them, as it offers a direct route to influence the shopper; while at home, on the move and in digital and physical stores on the path to purchase. The retail landscape is increasingly complex and fragmented, and has been made even harder to navigate in 2020 by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Heineken were seeking to make effective planning and investment choices through insight and data driven decisions, retiring multiple spreadsheets, in order to manage budgets, plan activations and detailed campaigns, to create one version of the truth, accessible across the entire organization. They required a system to provide visibility of shopper, category, price promotion and media plans for alignment, analysis and better decision making.

SOLUTION

BASE^® Technologies provided the BASE^® Brands Platform and dedicated resource to scope, develop and deliver the solution to Heineken’s specification, including organisational readiness, alignment, configuration of category, brand and retailer hierarchies and user training.  

Governance and project management requirements were set up to align, plan, execute and monitor progress across all stakeholders across the organisation, with clear goals and timelines. 

ACTION

BASE^® Technologies implemented the BASE^® Brands tailored web-based commercial planning application in Heineken with a simple and intuitive user interface that provides a single source of truth for all user to lay down, align and maintain their budget, activations and campaigns enabling better decision making and driving efficiencies across the organisation.

The data-led, multi-channel planning and analytics platform, supported by expert consultancy provides transparency, control and enables measurement at scale to drive increased commercial effectiveness and optimise Marketing ROI. The dashboard of key performance indicators informs Heineken investment choices for integrated commercial plans across all customers, channels, media and markets.  

Specifically, BASE^® Brands provides Heineken with post campaign measurement to prove and improve ROI, with integrated outlet level analytics, enabling fast and cost effective modelling of sales impact from activities leveraging a powerful database of retail data, media touchpoints and historical ROI to inform better decisions.

Our team of industry experts and field practitioners from leading blue chip organisations provide support to Heineken through consultancy in strategy, process, capability and training and drive value creation from the adoption of the software across the organisation.

We helped develop organisational readiness and implementation for Heineken, configured the solution to Heineken context, brands, categories and retailers and integrated with existing Trade Promotion Management systems (via API) to surface valuable information to key stakeholders across the organisation. 

RESULTS

BASE^® Brands now provides transparency of marketing spend, as well as rigour to the planning, budgeting and evaluation process, notably enabling Heineken to manage budget at scale, drive zero based budgeting approach, review plans to maximise returns and react with speed and agility to market changes.

BASE^® Brands has delivered both efficiency and effectiveness benefits to Heineken, as well building operational capability and enabling teams to work effectively in a remote working world:

Better decisions driven through insight-led touchpoint planning, achieved through visibility of plans in once place, together with tracking and measurement of ROI. In three years Heineken has realised an increase in ROI by over 100%.

Faster response through automation, simplification, visibility and control of budgets and consistency of planning; delivering 12% time saving from automated activity reporting.

Cheaper cost through planning as one team, with transparency of spend across the shopper journey, granular campaign evaluation and identifying inefficient spend to unlock better investment choices: 15% wasted spend identified in one year and re-allocated to more productive touchpoints.

Our expert team has also led strategic consultation projects and deep dive analysis into brand performance to inform future planning. Evaluating campaigns against a number of key campaign metrics have helped develop insights and recommendations, which resulted in Heineken securing the annual shopper marketing budget against proven ROI delivery.

In summary, BASE^® provides a consistent way for Heineken to simplify for effectiveness and efficiency, enable transformation and drive ROI, providing a single source of truth for the go to market plan.