Expert: Eric Hofer - 6/20/2009

Question
Hi Eric,

I am currently consulting for a small liquor start-up who
has gained a lot of traction in the southwest and is
currently being picked up by some of the major big box
retailers. My question is regarding software in the liquor
supplier and branding biz. I have been looking around for a
few weeks for a software package or database that can be
used to track and plan sales forecasts/inventory management
and marketing ROI.

My problem is we are projecting sales out for the next year
and need to plan how much inventory we may need/distributor
buys and retail account depletion. Also, I am looking for a
way to capture our marketing spend, analyze our marketing
programs and then start calculating an ROI to see which
marketing programs are more effective than others. Most of
the work will be done capturing this data and then analyzing
it myself, but is there any software that you know of that
can assist with these tasks? If all else fails I was going
to build my own database, but I need a data model to get
started. Any help in the right direction would be
appreciated as I see your experience is in data capture and
back office reporting.

Answer
For In-Field staff related to order capture, marketing spend, Sales Development, etc., we're doing systems in this area and based over the internet.

For forecasting, there's a group out of Switzerland that can take your info and generate forecasts (used by Cibavision, so they have a lot of experience with complex SKUs).  Drop me an email on e@a@h@o@f@e@r on g mail and I'll put you in touch.