From TPM to Integrated RGM: How Lindt Canada unified TELUS solutions for on-shelf success
Key takeaways for consumer goods companies
TELUS RGM Analytics transformed POS and shipment data into a competitive advantage for Lindt Canada by enabling:
Data harmonization at scale: Unified view across 15+ data sources, multiple channels and hundreds of SKUs without ongoing IT burden
Weekly insights: Faster response to market dynamics than monthly syndicated data allows
Store-level granularity: Analysis from executive dashboards to individual store, SKU and week combinations
Cross-functional accessibility: Single source of truth serving sales, operations, finance, marketing and executive teams
Managed service delivery: Technology platform plus ongoing data management, master data maintenance and custom analytics development
Learn how Lindt Canada transformed fragmented data sources into a single source of truth – enabling weekly insights, improved visibility and enhanced analytics to drive competitive advantage in the premium chocolate market.
Executive summary: Data harmonization as competitive advantage
For consumer goods organizations managing multiple retail partners, channels and hundreds of SKUs, fragmented point-of-sale data creates operational inefficiency and limits strategic agility.
Lindt Canada, a premium chocolate company with over 700 SKUs across grocery, drug, club and specialty channels, faced this challenge. After a decade using TELUS Trade Promotion Management, Lindt recognized that managing POS data from each wholesale customer in separate data cubes prevented centralized reporting, created inconsistent analytics and consumed significant IT resources.
By partnering with TELUS RGM Analytics, Lindt Canada evolved from disparate, manually-managed POS cubes to an integrated analytics platform delivering weekly insights across the entire organization.
Maximize your on-shelf success with RGM Analytics
Software used
TELUS RGM Analytics
Key capabilities delivered:
Unified data platform: Harmonized 15+ data sources across 7,000+ retail stores from leading retailers (Walmart, Loblaws, Costco), integrating 700+ SKUs and 4,500+ customer item combinations into a single source of truth
Weekly insights with store-level granularity: Transformed monthly reporting cycles into weekly updates with visibility from executive dashboards down to store-by-SKU-by-week analysis across 8 subbrands and 4,500+ customer items
Rapid implementation and deployment: Achieved full data harmonization within one month and complete organizational training within two months
About Lindt Canada
Lindt Canada is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Lindt & Sprüngli, the global premium chocolate company headquartered in Switzerland. With over 20 years of continuous growth across Canadian wholesale channels, the company manages a highly innovative portfolio featuring iconic brands like Lindor and Lindt Excellence, with over 700 SKUs including seasonal innovations and new flavor launches. As a premium chocolate manufacturer, Lindt Canada faces unique market dynamics including commodity price volatility, seasonal demand patterns and maintaining brand positioning across diverse retail channels.
The challenge: Fragmented data preventing strategic insights
Before implementing TELUS RGM Analytics, Lindt Canada managed POS data through separate cubes for each wholesale customer, a common evolution for growing CPG companies that begins with one or two retailer data feeds and expands into an increasingly complex web of disparate systems.
After failed internal attempts, TELUS RGM Analytics stood out for its unique 'POS analytics as a service' model—the perfect combination of product and service to finally crack the nut.
John Walter
Director of IT, Lindt Canada
Key challenges included:
Operational inefficiency: IT resources consumed by manually downloading, managing and updating data from multiple retailer portals
Inconsistent data analytics: Each key account manager developed different reporting approaches, preventing standardized insights
Limited visibility: Inability to run centralized reporting across all retail partners and channels
Master data complexity: Managing product hierarchies, seasonality and over 700 SKUs with constant innovation across separate systems
Delayed insights: Monthly reporting cycles insufficient for responding to pricing changes, innovation launches and competitive dynamics
The solution: TELUS RGM Analytics for unified, actionable insights
TELUS RGM Analytics transformed Lindt Canada's approach to performance data through comprehensive harmonization, weekly updates and cross-functional accessibility, delivered through a unique combination of technology platform and managed service.
The four pillars of successful data harmonization
Product harmonization: TELUS harmonized 4,500+ unique customer item combinations into Lindt's 700+ base item hierarchy, maintaining both retailer-specific classifications and Lindt's global product structure. The team proactively managed new SKU identification through web research, store visits and planogram analysis—minimizing client burden while ensuring accurate categorization.
Time period alignment: The platform standardized weekly, monthly and fiscal calendar reporting across data sources with varying cadences, managing complex scenarios including 53-week years, retailer-specific calendars and year-over-year comparisons.
Geographic and channel standardization: TELUS established clear definitions for brick-and-mortar versus e-commerce sales, managed parent-child retailer hierarchies and aligned POS data with Lindt's ship-to customer structure, ensuring accurate ship-to-consumption analysis.
Measures and calculations: The platform delivered standard CPG metrics plus custom calculations tailored to Lindt's business needs, including store count management, FX rules for multi-currency reporting and inventory definitions aligned with supply chain processes.
Implementation approach: Managed service model
Unlike traditional software implementations, TELUS RGM Analytics operates as a managed service handling data acquisition from retailer portals, proactive maintenance of portal changes and file format updates, master data management through research and collaboration, custom development of specialized reports and continuous support through regular business reviews.
This was not just a company that understood the technology but also had a real rich understanding of CPG. It was never 'we can't do that.' It was always 'yes we can do that and how can we help.
John Walter
The results: Weekly insights driving competitive advantage
Integrating CPG software, TELUS TPM and RGM Analytics, revolutionized Lindt Canada's ability to respond to market dynamics, track innovation performance and optimize trade strategies.
Strategic capabilities:
Faster market response: Weekly POS updates versus monthly Nielsen data enabled rapid response to pricing changes and competitive dynamics
Innovation tracking: Custom trackers provided store-level visibility across channels, informing weekly organizational newsletters
Price elasticity monitoring: Specialized tracker enabled rapid assessment of consumer response to cocoa commodity-driven price increases across regions and product lines
Cross-channel insights: Unified view across grocery, drug, club and specialty channels revealing regional and format-specific opportunities
Operational improvements:
Data harmonized and tools deployed within one month; full organizational training completed within two months
Eliminated ongoing manual data management, freeing IT team for strategic initiatives
Single source of truth replaced inconsistent account-specific reporting approaches
Analysis capability from executive dashboards down to individual store, SKU and week combinations
Weekly data refreshes without manual intervention or client resource requirements
Organizational impact:
Executive management, sales, operations, demand planning, finance and marketing teams accessing consistent data through PowerBI dashboards and Connected Excel
Organization-wide access without seat license restrictions
Centralized portal for data tools, retailer planograms and analytics resources
TELUS team driving innovation based on Lindt challenges, with new capabilities benefiting entire client base
Unlike typical consultants who overpromise and underdeliver, the TELUS team took true ownership. They drove the project, mastered the technical and business details, and partnered with us to solve every challenge—exceeding all expectations.
John Walter
Real-world applications: Price elasticity and innovation launches
Navigating commodity-driven pricing pressure
When cocoa commodity prices increased four-fold, Lindt Canada needed to understand price elasticity by region, channel, and product line and monitor consumer response immediately as pricing hit shelves.
TELUS RGM Analytics enabled Lindt to:
Model different pricing scenarios before implementation
Track weekly sell-through as price increases rolled out
Identify elasticity differences across regions and channels
Make rapid adjustments based on early performance signals
Receive insights weeks ahead of monthly Nielsen data
Launching new product innovation: High-stakes innovation tracking
When launching a new product, the company needs store-level visibility across all channels to understand consumer response to the product.
Custom trackers provide:
Weekly shipment versus sell-through analysis by retailer
Store-level performance
Regional and channel performance comparisons
Enables weekly organizational newsletters informing stakeholders of launch progress
Rapid identification of distribution and velocity opportunities
Implementation success factors: Partnership and CPG expertise
The implementation successfully transformed Lindt Canada's analytics capabilities through technology excellence, managed service delivery and deep consumer goods industry knowledge.
CPG expertise driving value
TELUS RGM Analytics consultants bring decades of CPG experience across operations, sales and marketing, understanding business context beyond technical implementation:
Industry knowledge: Understanding of trade promotion dynamics, seasonal patterns and retail execution challenges
Proactive problem-solving: Anticipating data challenges and resolving issues without client escalation
Business partnership: Serving as advisers offering best practices and strategic insights, not just technology vendors
Rapid response: Building custom analytics (pricing trackers, innovation dashboards) within days of requests
Key differentiators from traditional consulting
No change request burden: TELUS absorbs complexity rather than creating additional client work
Ownership mentality: Taking responsibility for data quality, master data management and issue resolution
Speed to value: One-month data harmonization and two-month full deployment versus typical multi-quarter implementations
Managed service model: Ongoing data management, portal monitoring and format change handling without client intervention
Collaborative innovation: Client challenges driving platform enhancements benefiting entire customer base
Using TELUS Trade Promotion Management since 2013, we saw the chance to integrate critical data across our sales tech spectrum by adopting their POS analytics solution.
John Walter
Director of IT, Lindt Canada
TELUS RGM Analytics delivers actionable insights for consumer goods companies
TELUS RGM Analytics helps consumer goods companies transform fragmented POS and shipment data into unified, weekly insights through comprehensive harmonization, managed service delivery and deep CPG expertise.
Ready to transform your data into competitive advantage like Lindt Canada?
Discover how TELUS RGM Analytics' four pillars of data harmonization, weekly updates and managed service model can help you eliminate data silos, accelerate insights and drive better business outcomes across your organization.
Maximize your on-shelf success with RGM Analytics
FAQ
How can a CPG manufacturer overcome data fragmentation?
A CPG manufacturer can overcome data fragmentation by using an integrated analytics platform that acts as a single source of truth. This platform combines all the scattered data from different sources and channels into one unified system, giving you weekly, store-level insights across your entire business.
What is the process for harmonizing retailer data?
The process for harmonizing retailer data is built on four main steps:
Product: Translating thousands of retailer-specific product codes into the company’s own standard product list.
Time: Standardizing all the different weekly, monthly and fiscal calendars used by various data sources.
Location and channel: Creating clear definitions for different sales types (like physical stores vs. e-commerce) and making sure store data aligns with customer shipping data.
Metrics: Providing standard industry metrics plus any custom calculations your business needs.
Why is a managed service approach helpful for harmonizing retailer data?
A managed service approach is helpful for harmonizing retailer data because the technology partner takes on the heavy lifting. This means they handle collecting data from retailer portals, proactively managing data format changes, keeping product master data clean, building custom reports and fixing issues. This frees up your internal IT team to focus on bigger, strategic projects instead of manual maintenance.
What are the advantages of having unified retailer data every week?
The advantages of having unified retailer data every week are that you can:
React faster: Make rapid adjustments to things like pricing or promotions based on weekly market data, instead of waiting for monthly reports.
Track new products: Use custom trackers to monitor new product launches at the store level and quickly identify distribution or sales opportunities.
Make data-driven decisions: Run specialized analysis, like price elasticity monitoring, to see how customers react to cost changes across different channels and regions.
Streamline operations: Eliminate manual processes and replace inconsistent reports with one reliable source of truth.
