Case Study: The Hillman Group achieves over $850,000 in price-change cost savings with LANSA

Hillman reduces the cost of implementing a price change

The Hillman Group, a Cincinnati-based distributor supplying over 55,000 SKUs to more than 21,000 retailers, faced a costly, labor‑intensive process for rolling out mass price changes: label rooms printed complete label sets for every store, generating high shipping, material and in‑store application costs that previously totaled about US$1 million per price change. Managing multiple pricing levels, regional profiles and unique store planograms made the process inefficient and wasteful.

Using LANSA, Hillman developed a Customer Intelligence Repository (CIR) with handheld scanning and store planograms so reps and customers could print only the labels needed for each display. With a $245,000 initial outlay (including $15,000 for handheld software), the company reduced price‑change implementation costs by over $850,000, saved roughly two hours of rep time per store, immediately recouped more than $600,000 on the first change in 2008, and gained a platform for further PIM, inventory and workflow savings (an estimated $250,000/year from an automated credit workflow).

The Hillman Group

Kirk Townsley

Application Development Manager