BPM: Do you break down your depletions in any way other than by state? Do you look at other dimensions of how your products are moving?
Schechter: The other dimension (apart from time) is by product or by marque. We go down to what we call the marque or quality level. So instead of a whole brand — for instance Hennessy — we’ll look at it by each of the individual marques or qualities, like VS and XO. We can go down as low as the SKU level, for example 750ml, 1.0L and 1.75L if necessary, depending upon the analysis that’s being performed.

BPM: Does MH Biz include dashboards and other visualization tools to help people see how your products are moving?
Schechter: We have some. We do definitely need to update those. One of the things we’re going to be rolling out is a Cognos Excel add-on, because a lot of people are more comfortable in Excel. And a lot of the work that people do here has to do not only with the depletions information, which Wayne was talking about, but also with accounts sold, which is the depletions at the account level such as a bar, restaurant or liquor store. Most of the brand teams look at that information so that they can see the results if they’ve been doing different programs or putting different things in place. They can see if that’s affecting their sales, their depletions.

BPM: It sounds like you’re running your entire business based on the information coming out of this system. Obviously not every industry has something like the Beverage Data Network to feed them information, but what would you say to someone who is trying to make budgeting decisions based on spreadsheets and guesswork?
Walsh: Invest! Invest some money in technology and information systems.
Schechter: We’ve found that it’s been well worth it here, to get the information out to the majority of the people in the company. A large part of our team is here in New York, but we also have satellite offices, as well as people like market managers who work from home. They have all of the data that everybody else sees readily available to them on the same portal, in the same place, in the same way. For our company, that’s been a big plus. It’s been a good investment; I don’t think anyone has seen it otherwise.
Walsh: The only add-on to the investment in the technology is the investment in education and training.

BPM: Is that something that’s ongoing? I know you’ve had this in place for quite a while.
Walsh: Yes. We have regular training sessions.
Schechter: I do them as often as I possibly can. When we have new employees, one of the first things we try to do is sit down with them and review MH Biz. We review what data is available, how to access it, how to view it, how to download it — and what you can do with it.