Blacksmith Applications Unveils Latest Version of FORGE (SM) Trade and Settlements Software
Boston, MA-(October 1, 2009) - Blacksmith Applications, the leader in trade spend and pricing software solutions for the foodservice industry, announced today the availability of version 6.0 of FORGESM Trade and FORGESM Settlements software, as the company continues to focus on software that facilitates visibility and decision-making down to the lowest levels of the organization, while maintaining accountability by restricting access and approval to predefined thresholds.
Version 6.0 enables customers to approve pricing, rebates and promotions via mobile devices including Blackberry® and iPhoneTM. This enables sales, marketing and finance to approve deals from their mobile device while on the road, without logging into the application, reducing the time required to approve deals and facilitating greater customer responsiveness. Other features automate key processes and analysis - such as freight-based pricing, volume forecasting, auto-payment of distributor programs and deduction matching - that enable manufacturers to make better decisions with less effort.
Gary Karp, Executive Vice President at Technomic, commented, "This latest version of FORGESM promises more efficient workloads for sales, deduction processing and others involved in trade processes. Greater efficiency is necessary at a time like this in order to handle the increased volume of discounts manufacturers are evaluating and processing given the economic environment. Customer responsiveness is always important but becomes even more vital when customers are pitting manufacturers against one another, and the features in version 6.0 help manufacturers' front-line representatives quickly evaluate opportunities and respond to customers."
"Many of today's trade spending software solutions are simply repositories for pricing and trade spending programs; they don't allow manufacturers to evaluate if an opportunity is profitable or if there is available budget," said Paul Wietecha, CEO, Blacksmith Applications. "With FORGESM Trade, manufacturers' sales reps and brokers have a robust, easy-to-use application that calculates the expected profitability of an opportunity and ensures there are available dollars - and features added in version 6.0 make the evaluation and approval process even quicker and easier."
FORGESM is a comprehensive trade spending and pricing platform that supports the creation, evaluation, approval workflow, maintenance and settlement processing for national and regional price lists, distributor allowances and trade - including distributor-specific pricing, rebates, lump sum and growth programs, operator deviated prices, both FOB and delivered, and rebates and broker commissions. It integrates with manufacturers' ERP and other systems for master and transactional data such as product and product hierarchy, customer and customer hierarchy, invoices, claims, payment requests, payment information, deductions and pricing. With all programs in one system, customers can evaluate the profitability and potential opportunity of each opportunity, reflecting other deals with the same customer(s) to give customers an accurate view of the potential profitability. With all these trade spending types in one system, customers have a platform to evaluate customer and product profitability for their entire business.
FORGESM facilitates improved analysis with less effort through additional enhancements:
- Freight-based pricing tools to more simply support lane-specific destination-based delivered pricing for national accounts
- Improved volume forecasting simplifies calculations inclusive of billbacks, credits and direct-ship volumes, for more accurate, straightforward projections
- Budget-based management tools to augment existing margin approval controls with authorization thresholds based on budget, committed and spent dollars
- Settlement 'auto-pay' features to automatically create monthly and quarterly distributor rebates for approval, based on purchase volumes
- "Match Central" utility to reduce time spent resolving deductions
- New, Flex technology search tools to simplify and speed searching
In the past three years, Blacksmith Applications has seen its number of customers double. According to Mr. Wietecha, "Blacksmith Applications enables its customers to evaluate the profitability of proposed pricing, promotions and trade spending programs and to measure product and customer profitability. In today's economic environment, ensuring profitable performance is more important than ever. These new features in version 6.0 will help manufacturers be even more responsive to their customers, while enabling them to continue to focus on bringing in profitable volume and make better decisions for their business."
About Blacksmith Applications
Blacksmith Applications enables organizations to confidently manage their trade spending and pricing initiatives profitably through software solutions and strategic consulting. Blacksmith specializes in solving the unique needs of foodservice manufacturers, while also meeting clients' needs for CPG and other lines of business. Clients rely on Blacksmith software and services to plan, execute, settle and analyze their trade spending and pricing programs. Blacksmith solutions enable profitable decision-making, provide insight into trade spend and promotion performance, facilitate customer and product profitability analysis and enable visibility and accountability through configurable workflow and approval settings. For more information, visit http://www.blacksmithapps.com.
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