Balton Trading Asia unlocks huge savings by enhancing supply, demand, and trade promotion planning

Balton Trading Asia competes in the fast-moving consumer goods distribution business, where low operational costs are essential for success. Each year Balton Trading Asia distributes more than 64,000 tons of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) to some 17,000 retailers across Uzbekistan. Building on nearly three decades of experience, Balton is growing fast: the company plans to double its revenue in two years, even as competition in the region heats up.

To fine-tune business processes, enhance agility, and reduce costs, Balton deployed Anaplan supply chain and trade promotion management planning solutions — and achieved 60% growth in just two years.

• To navigate in its fast-changing market, Balton established a planning team with a mandate to drive more efficient and collaborative demand, supply, and promotion planning. The team quickly found that spreadsheets could not accommodate the sophistication of Balton’s operations. The company’s rapid growth over just two years — raising the number of stock keeping units (SKUs) from 300 to 2,000 and opening seven new warehouses — added to the challenge.
• Embracing integrated planning. Balton replaced its spreadsheet-driven process with fully integrated digital workflows powered by Anaplan. Through a phased rollout, the company built and implemented collaborative solutions for demand, supply, and promotion planning.
• “Planingo went the extra mile to help us redesign our processes so we could get the maximum benefit from Anaplan,” recalls Gorbunov. “This was especially clear in the way that the team helped to improve our methodologies for supply planning and trade promotion planning, particularly in replenishment order and uplift assessment calculations.”
• Empowering faster, more-informed decisions. With Anaplan in full production, Balton has accelerated planning cycles and uncovered new ways to reduce costs. “With Anaplan, we have all the information we need at our fingertips, and we can test scenarios and adjust plans in real time during meetings. By improving the flexibility of our planning activities with Anaplan, we’ve increased customer service levels from 70% to 85%.”
• Balton now has increased visibility into stock levels and customer demand, which reduces stock write-offs of unsold products.
• That, in turn, has helped accelerate business growth and reduce costs. “We’ve grown our business by 60% since bringing on Anaplan, and we’ve only added two people to our planning team. This shows how our planners can be more productive with our Anaplan solution. We’re better positioned to stay competitive and deliver the products that our customers want, exactly when they want them”, recalls Gorbunov.

• 60% business growth achieved since adopting Anaplan.
• 15% boost in customer service levels supports retailer loyalty.
• 0,3% of revenue – reduced stock write-offs – saves money and cuts waste–
• Reduced analysts’ time from extracting, reviewing and correcting numbers to providing strategic advice to the business.

Source: Anaplan