Promotion Management Welkoop on wheels

When a retailer's promotional flyer lands in your mailbox, much has already been done. The same goes for a digital newsletter, daily deal, or discount voucher. Besides the photography, text, layout, and printing of such promotional materials, a great deal of care has also gone into the promotional offer. At Welkoop, they know this like no other. With a circulation of 26 product flyers annually, that is quite a feat. Since 2013, Welkoop has been using an application for this purpose to enter prices, discounts, special seasonal promotions, and supplier agreements. In 2017-2018, Agerion collaborated on a new, even more user-friendly version of this application.

Ruud: "Until recently, publishing a product brochure and digital newsletters every two weeks was a labor-intensive and error-prone task due to manual and duplicate entries in multiple systems. We created the price tags using information from Excel, and entered discounts and promotions had to be manually checked and corrected.

We now knew there was software that could improve this process. Moreover, we wanted to keep up with market developments and utilize the functionality of today's programs."

Hanno: "The new Promotion Manager application was built using the Dutch software platform Mendix. It is a low-code platform with pre-built modules and templates. We worked with software developer FlowFabric to tailor the Promotion Manager to Welkoop's needs. It is visually appealing and developed relatively quickly."

Ruud: “Anne-Marije has experience with the promotional process within companies. Because of this, she already knew what was possible with this kind of promotion management solution. She also thinks logically about the necessary steps in a workflow. She has a holistic view of the whole process, with an eye for the process. And as an outsider, she also brings a fresh perspective.”

Hanno: “For this project, we used the Scrum project management method, dividing the project into sprints that we executed step by step. This allowed us to do twice as much in half the time. With this approach, it is immediately visible when you tweak something. This is in contrast to large development projects, where so little is visible at the beginning. By using Scrum together, we were working on the front end of the application right from the start. This allowed us to see immediately how the various functionalities worked. We literally contributed shoulder to shoulder on small subprojects that together led to the completion of Promotion Manager.”

Ruud: "After a week of thorough testing, we implemented the new application overnight, following a final check. This was only possible with well-thought-out test scripts and a test coordinator. We also had the software developer on-site. That meant we could move quickly."

Ruud: "Especially the ease of use. We now make fewer errors because the software helps us enter the correct data. This has dramatically increased the speed of data entry. We also use a single point of entry. Data is entered once and then used in multiple systems. The entered data is automatically forwarded to other systems, such as the cash register, the online store, and the ERP system. Promotion Manager also provides a clear overview of campaigns and promotions. Reports help us easily evaluate the promotions. And with less manual work, creating promotional materials runs smoothly."