Montego Pet Nutrition cuts rebate planning cycle from days to just seconds with Acterys Planning Intelligence

This case study details how Montego’s Data Platform team cut rebate planning time from days to just seconds by taking advantage of Acterys’ powerful enterprise-grade write-back capabilities, With deployment taking just weeks, Acterys Planning Intelligence is now being rolled out to further Montego projects, including initiatives to take advantage of Acterys Planning Intelligence’s AI-ready capabilities.

Montego Pet Nutrition was founded in early 2000 in Graaff-Reinet, South Africa – the heart of the Karoo region in the country’s Eastern Cape. The company is Africa’s largest independent pet food manufacturer, producing 300 tonnes of pet food every day and offering nine high-quality brands with over 180 individual products for a wide range of market segments and appetites.

The Montego product family features four nutrition brands for dogs, three for cats, treats for dogs and cats, a topper sauce for dogs, as well as its XenPet range of pet wellness and grooming products. While the benefits vary, all Montego products are made using the finest ingredients – in carefully calculated proportions and according to original recipes – then cooked to perfection in Montego’s world-class factory.

Establishing the requirement for ‘a single version of the truth’

Montego Pet Nutrition originally needed a rebate calculator tool to support its sales team and partners. According to Sunelle Botha, Montego’s Data Platform Engineer: “we use rebates as an important sales negotiation tool, yet our sales team found that the whole rebate process was time-consuming and impractical. Our sales people couldn’t simply negotiate a rebate level when they were with a customer. Instead they had to return to the office, and effectively spend two or three days sourcing the right data, modeling and playing with it to find the right rebate scenario for each customer. Only then could they go back to the client to continue to the discussion.”

This clearly needed to change. Nico Botes, the company’s Data Platform Manager, highlighted the challenge. “Things had turned into a classic Excel hell, with scattered spreadsheets all across the business, and each user having their own approach to rebate planning. This meant we were dealing with constantly-moving targets, had no direct line of sight on the bottom line, and no real ability to take actions based on any of this data.

“We needed a centralized tool to help us model our rebates and forecasts – one that could capture all the rebate requirements from sales people in the field, and immediately give them the ability to visualize the impact on their KPIs and the company’s bottom line,” continued Nico. “We did an extensive analysis of available options, but just couldn’t find an off-the-shelf solution that ticked all the boxes and met our needs.”

Recognizing the requirement for an enterprise solution

“It was clear we needed an enterprise-class solution to solve this problem. Our goal was to provide a tool that would help shorten the rebate cycle for our sales team, so we initially thought we could build our own solution based around Microsoft Power BI and Fabric,” explained Nico. “However, we quickly established that this would be more complex than we thought. We recognized that the requirement for real-time data for rebates would inevitably require some form of comprehensive, enterprise write-back capability. We knew we would need a more specialist solution that could not only deliver on our write-back requirements, but that would also scale to accommodate our large data sets and models.”

When selecting an enterprise solution, the Montego Data Platform team was determined to opt for an approach that would enable them to deliver on their need for ‘a single version of the truth’. Nico Botes recalled that “we highlighted four key requirements for the Montego rebate data project: a real-time scenario modeling capability; a secure, enterprise-grade write-back capability; comprehensive security with version control; and the ability to support multi-user collaboration across Montego’s different business units.”

As part of the procurement process the team was given access to the Acterys Planning Intelligence Solution as part of a proof-of-concept/proof-of-value exercise. “This allowed us to try the Acterys software with real Montego data in real scenarios, and it proved a solid,100% match,” said Nico. “We quickly found that Acterys just integrated seamlessly into our semantic models and dialogues, as well as our custom visualizations.”

Sunelle Botha also highlighted the Acterys Planning Intelligence software’s ability to get data from anywhere. “With Acterys, data doesn’t need to be in a semantic model in order to use it. This is something that we knew would really help us as we already had established data across the business. Just being able to push the dimensions and make sure everything is aligned and in sync looked like a great benefit. The fact that we didn’t have to get involved in lots of nitty-gritty integrations, or jump through hoops to get our data displayed within the Acterys visuals, made huge sense for us. And the fact that we could do this using tools that we already knew – including Power BI and Excel – just made the whole process seamless.”

Deploying Acterys Planning Intelligence within weeks

Once the decision to opt for Acterys Planning Intelligence was made, things moved quickly. According to Sunelle: “from an Acterys perspective it was a rapid process, with the system set up in just a couple of days – it was super quick. On the Montego side we took a little longer, spending time with the sales team to see how the rebate process really worked, understanding their business logic and all the different rules and accounts, and engaging with our Finance team. It probably took us around two to three weeks to understand and implement this, but working with the Acterys software is great and it’s really easy-to-use.”

“We were quick to appreciate the enterprise-grade nature of Acterys Planning Intelligence,” added Nico Botes. “Working out all our complex rebate scenarios involved a significant learning curve, and it was important for us not to under-estimate the sheer scale of the logic, business metrics and math underpinning our rebate models, However, with Acterys it has always been solid and seamless, and – in addition to all the forums, knowledge base and help materials – the Acterys team has always been there for any additional support we needed.”

Unlocking performance benefits with Acterys

With Acterys Planning Intelligence deployed, the Montego Data Platform team has been able to report significant performance improvements for the Sales Rebate process – particularly around speed, efficiency, consistent and business outcomes.

“It used to take our regional sales managers days to complete the rebate process – now it’s just a question of seconds,” explained Sunelle. “A process that used to take days can now be conducted directly with customers, allowing them to consider different options, while the sales person always understands exactly what the impact of any decision would be. It’s proving transformational for our sales team.”

Acterys also helps Montego deliver a more consistent approach to the process, effectively building a database of rebate scenarios and options that can be re-used and that encourage sales team collaboration. Now everything follows the same core algorithms and logic, so there’s much less inconsistency. According to Nico: “selecting Acterys has more than paid off, especially compared to the cost of creating a bespoke, custom-built solution. And because our sales people now get to create rebate offers within seconds, we can complete deals when we’re on site with customers. Acterys also helps us to track the most successful rebate deals, so that we can use them more often.”

Identifying further opportunities with Acterys

Following the success of the Sales Rebate project, Montego’s Data Platform team is busy identifying and scoping out further ways of putting Acterys Planning Intelligence to work. “We’re already skilled up in Acterys, have added all the custom visuals into our dev stack, and there’s no need to provision any further infrastructure at the back-end,” said Nico.

“We’re working with our HR team scoping out a budgeting, forecasting and reporting capability. It’s a perfect candidate for Acterys write-back and the creation of what-if scenarios for recruitment planning,” added Sunelle. “Another opportunity in Finance would be to use Acterys to focus in on the variances that occur between the inputs of the raw materials and the outputs of finished goods, while we’re also looking at another use case on the supply chain and manufacturing side. The success of our Sales Rebate project has certainly attracted a lot of attention across the business!”

Nico Botes also highlighted how Acterys would help the Data Platform team in providing AI-ready data for future forecasting projects. “We’re thinking more about predictive analytics and looking at AI models and machine learning initiatives, and Acterys will be ready to support our AI-enabled planning requirements,” said Nico.

Results

• Acterys Planning Intelligence has dramatically cut sales rebate planning time from days to just seconds
• Montego Pet Nutrition benefited from Acterys deployment within weeks, accelerating time to benefit
• Powerful Acterys write-back ensures sales people can understand the impact of their rebate deals in real-time
• Montego Data Platform team to benefit from Acterys AI-ready capabilities