Case Study - Revolutionizing Pricing in Food Wholesale

A leading Finnish food wholesaler, a key player within the national Palvelutukkurit network, faced a critical operational bottleneck. Handling pricing across 10,000+ products and 300+ suppliers relied heavily on manual spreadsheet processes:

• Price lists arrived frequently, often with last-minute changes impacting high-demand periods.
• Managing promotions, supplier updates, and margin verification across thousands of SKUs consumed 3–4 months of intensive, error-prone labor.
• Teams were so consumed by data entry and validation that vital strategic tasks like profitability analysis were consistently deprioritized.
• Any data entry error risked cascading failures, disrupting order pipelines and compromising e-commerce accuracy.

These legacy manual workflows couldn't keep pace with the dynamic realities of the food wholesale business, leading to potential margin erosion and missed strategic opportunities. The wholesaler needed a partner who understood both the operational intricacies of their sector and possessed advanced data automation expertise—a partner capable of delivering rapid, tangible results without causing business disruption.

Econ stepped in, delivering a turnkey solution that fundamentally transformed the wholesaler's pricing strategy. By bridging their real-world operational needs with advanced data automation, we bypassed the limitations of manual processes:

Unified Data & Intelligent Automation

• Merged disparate data sources—supplier price lists, GS1 Synkka product data, and customer-specific agreements—into a single, cohesive platform.
• Automated updates for product catalogs, promotional pricing, and campaign management, eliminating tedious manual entry and reducing error potential.

Rapid Pricing & Transparent Margin Visibility

• Implemented real-time margin calculations and automated alerts, providing transparent visibility into profitability and risk factors instantly.
• Streamlined workflows allowed staff to update thousands of products rapidly, enabling agile responses to supplier cost adjustments and market shifts.

Preserving Operational Continuity

• Crucially, Econ integrated the solution seamlessly with the wholesaler's existing IT environment. There were no forced system replacements, respecting their current infrastructure and ensuring minimal disruption—a core Econ principle of enhancing, not just replacing.
• E-commerce platforms and order fulfillment pipelines remained fully operational throughout the transition.

Enabling Proactive, Strategic Decision-Making

• By automating the manual burden, the solution freed up valuable team resources to focus on higher-impact activities like profitability optimization and developing targeted customer promotions.
• Timely, accurate data fueled confident forecasting, robust supplier negotiations, and ultimately, smarter business decisions.

Econ’s targeted intervention delivered significant, measurable outcomes, transforming a labor-intensive bottleneck into a source of competitive advantage:

~90% Faster Pricing Cycle

The pricing workflow duration plummeted from 3–4 months down to just 1–2 weeks, ensuring pricing data remained current, accurate, and responsive to market dynamics.

Real-Time Accuracy & Reduced Risk

Automated data validation drastically minimized errors, eliminating the costly scramble to fix issues post-launch and building trust in the data. Supplier changes integrated seamlessly, removing blind spots.

Significant Operational ROI

Teams previously mired in manual data tasks were liberated to focus on strategic initiatives, driving efficiency improvements and uncovering new avenues for revenue growth and customer value.

Sustainable Competitive Advantage

The ability to make fast, accurate pricing decisions allows the wholesaler to react swiftly to market changes, secure more favorable supplier terms, and maintain customer satisfaction through reliable, up-to-date information.