.png)
Dr. Will’s is an all natural condiments company with a mission to make food better in every way. All the ingredients they use for their sauces are real, honest and healthy, from tomatoes and avocados to free range eggs and apple cider vinegar.
Dr. Will’s is primarily a UK business with distribution in Tesco, Waitrose, Ocado, Co-op and Holland & Barrett. Their current focus is to continue to grow their distribution and momentum, alongside growing ROS and brand awareness.
Here we speak to Dr. Will’s CEO and co-founder Liam White to talk through how they are using elm to save time and speak their buyers language.
SAVING VALUABLE TIME
Often companies can see that there is value in understanding data but knowing how to apply the right brain power can be tricky. The Dr. Will’s’ leadership didn’t want their team spending unnecessary time on mundane tasks so approached elm to help change this.
“The main thing that brought us to elm was time. All our data comes in different formats and from different retailers, they report slightly different things, but largely there are a lot of similarities. It’s just a case of consolidating the data. Instead of spending hours of time processing the data and building reports, elm allows us to focus on the analysis. We can easily get a birds eye view of our sales data and see how our sales are tracking as soon as we log onto the platform.
If we want more detail, the automation on elm allows us to take a deep dive into areas of data that we would never normally have time to look at. By using elm our sales team can now focus on turning insights into actions. That’s how I want my team to be spending their time.”
INSIGHTS INTO ACTIONS
With time back on their hands, the Dr. Will’s team can now focus on using data to their advantage, whether that is through top line analysis or diving into the details with promotional activity or store compliance.
“It’s important to look at data regularly but try not to get overwhelmed by it. The weekly report email from elm is perfect to enable productivity because it allows you to digest the data easily and focus on how to increase sales performance. This is especially the case for smaller businesses who don’t have a dedicated sales resource.
Take a new product launch for example, we can use the data on elm to monitor sales over a period of time. If it looks as though sales are slowing down, we can send people into the store and focus on compliance. When it comes to the promotional side of things it can be very difficult to track and analyse performance and often if you try and analyse the data manually it can take ages and result in very little. With elm you can reach conclusions quicker.”
SPEAKING THE BUYER’S LANGUAGE
“We always use data when talking to retailers and try to be as proactive as possible with updating them on our sales performance. One thing that we have found particularly useful when talking to retailers, is using elm data to show patterns in our geographical distribution and consumption of different products based on store formats. For example, our condiments are in some Tesco Express stores and on elm we can easily pull out metrics to share with our buyer and create a case to help increase our distribution across more stores.
It’s also important to understand the nuances between the data you are looking at and the data your buyer is looking at. By using elm you can tailor your sales reporting and speak the buyer’s language. There are a lot of metrics that are normally painful to calculate but with elm you can paint the right picture.”
DATA IS POWER
“Data is very powerful, the more you can bring data into your decision making process the better. An area where small businesses can triumph is that we can be more nimble, you can see the data insights on elm and take actions immediately, whether that’s developing a new product or focusing on store compliance. Having the data collated for us quickly is crucial for us and allows us to differentiate ourselves from other businesses.”
—
To learn more about getting started with elm today, email hello@getelm.co or signup below.
.png)