By Dani Schooley and Stephanie Davis

Are you looking to drive traffic and impact the bottom line? Maybe you have implemented limited time offers (LTOs), but experienced only mediocre results. Join us for a webinar that will highlight the challenges associated with LTOs and provide a framework to help you counter these risks and maximize the success and profitability of your promotions.

Let’s face it: The foodservice industry is a challenging marketplace. Total restaurant industry traffic is stagnant. Consumers are more demanding than ever about food quality, choice and variety. Technology advancements are changing the speed of business while commodity availability and prices are impacting everything from menu development to wages.

To combat these challenges, many foodservice brands are implementing LTOs. Among the 250 largest chains in the United States, LTOs have increased 25 percent over the last five years. And, they’ve done so with good reason. The LTO is a popular marketing tactic that historically has proven to be good for business. They play to consumers’ desires for new products or experiences and they serve to generate excitement and engagement. But, LTOs are tough to execute well.

Consider the variables that can undermine the best-planned LTOs. Foodservice supply chains are inherently complex. As brands look to offer the variety, local flavors and freshness consumers are demanding, the complexity grows. More suppliers mean a larger network of trading partners and systems to communicate with and more opportunities for breaks in supply. Add to these variables lack of visibility across the supply chain, unpredictable weather events, fluctuations in commodity pricing, multiple SKUs and fickle consumer tastes, and it’s no wonder LTOs are difficult to implement successfully.  Unfortunately, when LTOs under-perform, the entire organization is impacted and the brand’s reputation and bottom line often take a hit.

HAVI Global Solutions (HGS) helps brands maximize their LTO investments. Our approach to promotional and supply chain analytics is focused on actionable visibility, customized reporting and demand planning across organizations and with supply chain partners. HGS manages more than three billion forecasting transactions every day. We help customers get their products and materials where they need to go, when they need to get there and support them throughout the entire supply chain network.

We have developed a four-phased event planning process that makes strategic collaboration possible and provides the rigor necessary to counter the risks inherent in LTOs and maximize the success and profitability of these promotions:

• Phase 1: Event initialization. We gather information from the brand and its trading partners to better understand the data that is available and how that information will be communicated in support of the LTO.

• Phase 2: Pre-event planning. We help the brand develop an initial forecast and predict high-end and low-end sales scenarios to support contingency planning.

• Phase 3: Event management. We monitor actual performance against forecasted performance.  Near real-time data also is monitored and events are addressed swiftly and collaboratively to avoid negative effects.

• Phase 4: Post-event insights. We document actual performance relative to expectations, decompose gaps and incorporate these insights into feedback in the form of “lessons learned” for future events. 

Our repeatable process, coupled with technology-enabled planning and analytics, provides the rigor that ensures everyone within an organization and along the supply chain is aligned on objectives, strategy and execution from the program’s inception. We centralize information and promote collaboration and insights-based decision-making. The result? Brands achieve increased sales, accurate forecasting, best-in-class supply chain management, reduced inventory obsolescence and better demand planning.

Are you looking to leverage LTOs to break through in a crowded marketplace, excite customers and drive sales?

Please join us for a webinar, Delivering the LTO Promise, March 31, 2016, at 10 AM EST / 3PM GMT, to learn how rethinking your LTO process and tools can help you deliver the LTO promise. We will talk through HGS’ four-phased planning process and share an example of how one company is using this strategic approach to deliver positive results across the supply chain and impact the bottom line.

Dani Schooley is director of planning solutions at HAVI Global Solutions. She has more than 15 years of supply chain experience. Her career has spanned multiple industries, including pharmaceutical, retail and foodservice. Stephanie Davis is director of promotions management at HAVI Global Solutions. With more than 12 years of marketing and supply chain experience, Stephanie’s career has predominantly focused on the foodservice industry.