The Taste of Success: Powering a National Snack Brands’ Growth with Bridgepoint Consulting
Before Bridgepoint:
- Reliance on Excel, Google Sheets, and other basic applications to manage the business.
- Application architecture represented a barrier to growth and scalability.
- Demand and Supply planning were challenging to optimize procurement vs. sales activities.
After Bridgepoint:
- Stabilized platform enabled seamless integration of newly acquired brands into NetSuite.
- Facilitated the integration of Trade Promotion Management application to NetSuite.
- Obtained a single, consolidated view of all brand performance within the portfolio.
- Contributed to National Snack Brands’ acquisition for $1.6 Billion.
Project Overview:
This national snack brand, a high-growth manufacturer and seller that focuses on “better-for-you” snacks, faced significant operational challenges stemming from its rapid expansion. To sustain its impressive growth trajectory and prepare for future acquisitions, the national snack brand needed to overhaul its back-office processes and enhance its manufacturing and distribution capabilities.
Recognizing that their existing reliance on basic applications was a significant barrier to scalability, the national snack brand sought a more integrated platform. The company aimed to replace its manual, fragmented systems with a solution that could centralize data, optimize supply chain functions, and provide an extensive view of its diverse brand portfolio.
Bridgepoint Consulting’s NetSuite experts were enlisted to help configure their back-office processes and integrate critical capabilities, leveraging their deep experience with high-growth consumer packaged goods companies and complex system implementations.
Business Challenge:
While the national snack brand grew quickly, that growth also created some major bottlenecks in their operations. The company relied heavily on disconnected tools like Excel spreadsheets and Google Sheets, which, while sufficient in early stages, could no longer support the demands of a rapidly expanding CPG enterprise.
Because their existing technology wasn’t scalable, it became difficult to efficiently run manufacturing, match purchasing with sales, and streamline how products were distributed. This fragmented approach made it exceptionally difficult to gain accurate, real-time insights into overall business performance and effectively plan for future demand and supply. The lack of a unified system prevented them from easily integrating new products or brands, which was crucial for their acquisition strategy.
Bridgepoint Consulting was chosen for this project due to our proven track record in guiding high-growth companies through digital transformations, particularly in optimizing NetSuite for complex CPG operations.
Approach:
Bridgepoint Consulting’s team followed a structured approach to configure the national snack brand’s back-office processes and enhance their capabilities, ensuring an all-encompassing scalable foundation for continued growth:
- Platform Stabilization & Configuration: Our team worked to stabilize and configure the national snack brand’s core platform, ensuring it could support their existing operations and seamlessly integrate future acquisitions. This involved optimizing NetSuite to handle their specific manufacturing and distribution needs.
- Integration of New Brands: We facilitated the seamless integration of newly acquired brands into the unified NetSuite environment, ensuring all operations were consolidated under a single system.
- Trade Promotion Management Integration: We successfully integrated their Trade Promotion Management application with NetSuite, enhancing their ability to plan, execute, and analyze promotional activities for greater efficiency and insight.
- Process Optimization: Through careful analysis and configuration, we optimized key back-office processes, replacing manual, error-prone tasks with automated, scalable workflows.
- Data Consolidation Strategy: We implemented strategies to consolidate data from various sources into NetSuite, creating a single source of truth for all brands and operational performance.
Results:
By partnering with Bridgepoint Consulting, the national snack brand successfully transitioned from fragmented systems to a fully integrated, scalable platform, which directly supported their continued rapid growth and strategic acquisitions.
The National Snack Brand also saw the following benefits:
- Consolidated Brand View: Obtained a single, comprehensive view of performance across their entire brand portfolio, enabling more informed decision-making.
- Enhanced Scalability: Established a comprehensive application architecture that removed prior barriers, allowing for efficient management of current operations and seamless integration of future growth opportunities.
- Optimized Supply Chain: Improved capabilities for demand and supply planning, leading to better optimization of procurement activities against sales, reducing waste, and improving efficiency.
- Streamlined Integrations: Facilitated the smooth integration of new acquisitions and critical third-party applications like Trade Promotion Management.
- Increased Valuation & Acquisition: The successful stabilization and scalability of their operations, directly supported by Bridgepoint’s work, contributed to the national snack brand’s impressive acquisition for $1.6 Billion.
This transformation solidified the National Snack Brand’s position as a leader in the healthier snack market and demonstrated the critical role of robust back-office systems in supporting significant corporate growth and strategic exits.
Services Provided