Supplier Services

Overview

Value Proposition and Pricing

Data Process

New BDN System III Highlights

Data Center

Distributor Services

New Account Alert and Data Cleansing

Overview

BDN (Beverage Data Network) serves the Wine and Spirits Industry with product performance information to help Marketing and Sales professionals make better-informed business decisions. BDN collects, validates and delivers actual product movement data, tracked from the supplier to the wholesale distributor to both on and off premise retailers.  Data is provided on a monthly or weekly basis.

• Wholesale depletion data - aggregate product movement by wholesale distributor for every brand, size, pack.
• Retail account data - detailed product movement from wholesale distributor tracked to specific off and on premise retail outlets.

• Sales performance tracking.
• Wholesale inventory management.
• Retail product tracking at both off and on premise locations.
• Retail outlet market penetration.
• Marketing and sales promotion results measurement.
• Sales force compensation calculations.
• Production and supply management.

Our customers include suppliers representing approximately 85% of the distilled spirits and over 60% of the wine industry.

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Value Proposition

Simply put, our customers outsource the painstaking data gathering, matching, and distribution process to BDN, so they can focus on what they do best: producing and marketing their brands for the marketplace.

Many suppliers choose BDN after trying to gather product movement data from wholesalers on their own. As they get deeper into their attempt, they run into problems trying to gather and maintain accurate data:

• Difficulty capturing data from the myriad of wholesaler operating systems and data formats.
• Continual retail account openings and closings.
• Frequent re-use of retail account numbers by wholesalers.
• Inconsistent addressing standards.
• Huge development cost overruns and unexpected burdens on their IT staff.

• BDN employs a proprietary data cleansing process to deliver the best possible wholesale depletion and retail account product data.
• To manage the turbulent retail environment, we use a unique retail account coding system featuring the BDN Number, the wine and spirits “social security number” for on and off premise retail accounts.

Through our economies of scale and dedicated expertise, BDN saves the wine and spirits industry tens of millions of dollars annually.

Pricing

BDN pricing is based upon actual transaction volume for a supplier’s products and is guaranteed to be no higher than that of any other customer. Suppliers may purchase monthly or weekly:

• Wholesale depletion data.
• Wholesale depletion data and retail account data.
• Monthly or weekly reporting intervals.

• The brand identifiers at the wholesale level are mapped to the supplier product codes so each supplier can accurately track the performance of every item (brand, size, pack) in their product line.
• A specific account manager manages the entire process for each supplier
  • The account managers are experienced with their supplier’s unique data reporting requirements.
  • The account managers reconcile starting and ending wholesale inventories with supplier shipment and wholesale depletion data.
  • The account managers use an automated error detection system to catch the reporting anomalies from a supplier’s corresponding wholesale distributors and correct any mistakes and report errors to the distributors for their attention.
• A team of account coding assistants scours retail account records for name and address errors.
  • Every retail outlet is assigned a unique BDN account number to accurately identify that account across multiple distributors. A new BDN number is assigned every time a retailer’s attributes change.
  • The address of every retail outlet is certified to USPS standards and maintained in a master account file.
• A team of data input specialists handles data entry for suppliers and wholesalers with manual data handling needs.

• Duplicate or miss-labeled files.
• Improperly coded adjusting entries- incorrect +/- signs or bracketed entries.
• Missing digits.
• New items inconsistently identified at wholesale level.
• Reused wholesaler item numbers.
• Reconciling split cases or combo packaging.
• Retail location name changes.
• Reuse of old wholesale retail account numbers for new retail outlets.

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BDN System III Highlights

BDN launched System III in February 2004 - A completely new system to improve the entire data management process from data acquisition to delivery.

Key customer benefits include:

• Data Quality - Improved retail account identification accuracy using unique BDN Number account coding system.
• Customer Information - Online real time status reports for data processing and delivery (coming soon).
• Faster - Increased data reporting frequency – weekly or daily updates versus monthly.
• Customer Service - Improved account manager capacity to respond to specialized brand performance questions, e.g. historical comparisons, custom data sets, detailed data integrity issues.

• Front – end error detection.
• Poorly identified data is recognized by profile and correctly labeled and directed.
• Intelligent algorithms assign data accuracy confidence levels to incoming data to speed analysis and exception processing.

 


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Data Center

BDN operates its database system at a state-of-the-art Sungard facility to guarantee system availability:

• 24 x 7 x 365 Security and Technical Staff.
• Dedicated BDN Environment (not shared).

  –Multiple Redundant Switches, Firewalls, Servers.

  –Locked Enclosures and restricted BDN area.

• Multiple Redundant Comm. Lines, Power, HVAC with an On-site Power Sub-station and Diesel Generators.
• Production + Green Zone SQL Server Environments.
• Development/QA Servers and off-site tape storage in Fairfield Headquarters.
• File Services and Online Backup Server (in addition to tape).
• EMC Storage Area Network – 8 tera-byte capacity houses original database plus 5 clones.
• Multiple T-1 lines and back-up wireless connection to Fairfield Headquarters.

• Immediately identify new prospect accounts that you are not selling.
• Cleanse your account database of inaccurate information and append the BDN number to each account.
• Standardize addressing to certified USPS standards.

If you would like to find out more about this new offering please Click here and let us know how best to contact you to answer any questions you might have and provide pricing information for your market.



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