Consumer brands: one view of distributor sales

Twelve distributors file twelve different ways, and the national view gets rebuilt by hand every month

The problem

A distributor network reports what it wants to report. One sends a spreadsheet, another a PDF, another a system export with the columns in its own order. Product names differ, units differ, the week starts on a different day, and the cut-off dates do not line up. None of this is unreasonable from the partner's side. Each one built its reporting around its own operation.

The usual answer

The cost lands on whoever needs the national picture. Somebody spends the first half of the month opening files, mapping names to a master list, converting units, reconciling totals that do not agree, and chasing the two partners who filed late. What comes out is correct, and by the time it is correct the month it describes is nearly over. Commercial decisions get made against a picture that is two weeks behind, which in practice means they get made on instinct and the report is used to confirm them afterwards.

How we approach it

We take each partner's file in the format they already send and normalise it as it arrives. Product codes map to one master, units convert once, calendars align, and anything that fails validation gets flagged rather than silently averaged in. Partners are not asked to change how they work, because the ones with the least IT capacity are usually the ones you can least afford to lose visibility on. Adding a thirteenth distributor means adding one mapping, not rebuilding the process.

What changes

The national view is ready the day the files land. Nobody spends three weeks assembling it, and the number stops being a monthly deliverable and becomes something you can look at whenever you need it. Gaps show up as gaps, so a partner who has not filed is visible immediately instead of at the end of the reconciliation.