Economic growth in the US continues to face many daunting challenges. Companies across a wide range of industry sectors are experiencing top-line sales growth that is anemic at best, and in many cases negative. Foodservice is no exception: belt-tightening by households certainly impacts the food away from home sector. In the absence of the natural demand increase provided by a growing economy, what can enterprises do to improve their top-line performance?

At Sentrana we believe that companies can increase sales, even in tough economies, by understanding their own demand environments at the most detailed level possible – in other words, to be able to predict what products to offer to what customers, and to use insights from available sales data to make targeted recommendations around pricing, promotional activities and timing. In foodservice hundreds of thousands of products pass through any given distribution channel every day to hundreds of thousands of restaurants and other operators. To meet this challenge effectively manufacturers and distributors need to contribute their respective insights about products and customers onto a common platform from which to obtain a full picture of demand. Recently this has motivated prominent industry players to collaborate in managing performance across key product categories. Continue reading →