Responsible for marketing and distributing premium brands of perfume and cosmetics throughout Italy, LVMH Italia must meet the needs of its 1,500 retailers while adhering to global policies defined by LVMH corporate.
Using Nintex K2 Five, the organization has transformed its trade marketing processes, leading to a significant improvement in retailer satisfaction and cash flow. A second Nintex K2 Five process has improved the transparency of its retailer approval process.
Efficient invoicing for trade marketing
Challenge: Invoices lagging for retail vendors
Throughout Italy, LVMH Italia distributes and markets luxury fragrance, skincare and other cosmetic products from designer brands including Christian Dior, Fendi, Givenchy, and Kenzo. To promote these high-end products to potential customers, the company pays selected retailers to display in-store promotions and host marketing events, such as make-up demonstrations.
In the past, when retailers invoiced LVMH Italia for these trade marketing activities, their invoices often had incorrect or missing reference numbers, which meant that LVMH Italia couldn’t process the invoices promptly. The delays with LVMH Italia’s payments then resulted in deferred payments from retailers for LVMH Italia’s perfume and make-up products. This unfortunate situation led to cash flow delays, wasted employee time, and threatened to undermine the positive relationships between LVMH Italia and its retail partners.
Solution: Faster payments and improved cash flow
Now, LVMH Italia enters all information about planned trade marketing activities into Nintex K2 Five. Information for each activity to the relevant department for authorization. Then, during the promotion period, instructs an employee to visit the relevant store to verify that the marketing activity has indeed taken place. At the end of a verified activity, the automated process generates a proforma invoice for the retailer with all the correct references and financial details. When retailers then submit these pre-approved invoices, LVMH Italia can pay them without delay.
This streamlined process saves time for LVMH Italia’s employees while enabling the company to improve retailer satisfaction. Critically, the K2 Software has also improved the company’s cash flow, as retailers no longer have any reason to withhold their own payments to LVMH Italia. “Thanks to Nintex K2 Five, the overall situation for trade marketing payments has improved significantly,” says Mario Trovato, IT Manager at LVMH Italia. “We improved our DSO (Days Sales Outstanding) by one day on average every month, which translates to about €250,000 to €300,000 less in credit, which has a positive financial impact.”
Effective compliance with group policy
Challenge: Complex retailer approval process
LVMH Italia is part of the global perfume and cosmetics division of the wider LVMH group. As a result, it needs to adhere to policies that have been set at the group level and be able to provide evidence that it has followed the correct procedures to ensure compliance with international brand guidelines.
For example, LVMH Italia is required to follow a complex process for approving new retailers, to ensure that selected stores are of the right caliber for retailing the world’s most luxurious brands. In addition, LVMH Italia needs to check and re-approve its 1,500 existing retail outlets every two years, to verify that they are maintaining the high-quality retail experience that is appropriate for high-end cosmetics and perfumes.
Solution: An efficient and transparent workflow
LVMH Italia has completely transformed its retailer approval process using Nintex K2 Five. The organization has created a fully automated workflow that ensures all the required steps are taken to approve (or re-approve) retailers, in the right order, in accordance with group policy. “Nintex K2 Five manages the whole process from the start to the final approval,” Trovato says.
Signed contracts and other key documents can be attached to the workflow, putting all information relating to retailer approvals in one place, for the first time. This makes it easy for employees to look up retailers, find the relevant documentation and verify that the correct approval procedure has been followed, at any point in the future.
