Savvion Enables Brookshire Grocery to Recoup Millions by Automating the Supplier Discount and Management Process

Savvion®, Inc., the company that knows business process, today announced that Brookshire Grocery Company has deployed a complete automated system to manage the discount and rebate processes of their large suppliers such as Kraft Foods, General Mills and Procter and Gamble. The Savvion BusinessManager(TM)-based system has significantly reduced labor costs and errors while managing the recovery of millions of dollars in vendor rebates from large volume purchases associated with special product promotions.

Brookshire Grocery Company, founded in 1928, has grown to over 154 stores under the banners of Brookshire's, Super 1 Foods and Olé Foods in Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. While the company is vertically integrated with 2 distribution centers, a dairy, a fleet of 350 trucks, and bakery, ice cream, drink, and ice manufacturing facilities, it sources the majority of its products from traditional packaged goods suppliers (CPG). With a nearly overwhelming number of products to stock, inventory and sell, Brookshire's was faced with a common challenge in the retail industry, how to maximize the rebates and discounts offered by their CPG suppliers as part of co-op advertising and promotional offers.

Brookshires selected Savvion BusinessManager to streamline and automate the discount management process, known in the industry as 'deal sheets,' enabling them to manage and track the individual promotional programs to assure that their rebate forms are submitted on time, while taking full advantage of available discounts by ordering additional inventories before promotions expire. The system is heavily dependent on a unique Savvion event correlation capability that monitors inventory and schedules, reminds staff when rebate deadlines are nearing, notifies buyers to purchase additional inventory before rebates end, and alerts managers when submissions are falling behind schedule. The Savvion system has replaced a formerly manual paper-based process that was fraught with data entry errors and missed schedules, causing Brookshires to loose thousands of dollars in missed discounts and rebates.

The new Savvion-based system interoperates with previously separate Vendor, Buyer, Pricing and Accounting systems, as well as integrates with Brookshire's mainframe systems. Savvion's Process Partner, Hitachi Consulting, assisted Brookshire in developing and deploying the application.

"Savvion BusinessManager is ideally suited to address the complex, event driven, cross-business processes that Brookshires was faced with, challenges that are commonplace throughout the retail industry," said Shawn Price, Savvion President and CEO. "Through our network of Systems Integration Partners, such as Hitachi Consulting, Savvion is able to provide industry specific solutions that solve the unique needs of a broad range of vertical industries including the retail and packaged goods industries."

Savvion solutions enable companies to optimize operations by modeling, automating and managing consistent, repeatable business processes. Savvion addresses the business technology imperative to achieving true process improvement and management by treating processes as managed corporate assets. Savvion provides role specific tools that give managers unique real-time visibility into their ongoing business operations, not just with metrics and reports, but by also providing a framework that empowers companies to innovate while managing change.

About Savvion

Savvion develops business process management (BPM) software that improves business performance and reduces costs within and across functional business units. Savvion's lifecycle approach to process enables business and IT to truly collaborate to bring process improvement initiatives on-line in less than 90 days while delivering a 200% - 300% return on investment. Over 200 global business enterprises, public service agencies, and systems integration firms, including 17 of the Fortune 100, use Savvion systems to manage their business, from workgroup to enterprise, in real-time. Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Savvion can be reached at www.savvion.com or 888-544-5511.

The Savvion logo, Savvion and Savvion BusinessManager are trademarks or registered trademarks of Savvion, Inc.

For Press Relations Don Nanneman Savvion (408) 330-3496 dnanneman@savvion.com