New Funding Will Help to Double Employee Headcount, Establish New US Headquarters and Drive Significant Product Innovation
Aforza, the leading cloud and mobile solution specifically built for the consumer goods industry that empowers businesses of all sizes to sell more and grow faster, today announced a $22 million Series A funding round led by DN Capital, with further participation from Bonfire Ventures, Daher Capital, and Next47. Aforza plans on leveraging the funding to double its employee headcount over the next six months and establish new US headquarters in the Northeast to continue to democratize sales efforts within the consumer goods market and maximize results for businesses and consumers.
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With the global market for consumer packaged goods (CPG) applications expected to reach upwards of $15 billion by 2024, consumer goods companies around the globe are demanding tools that will help support their digital transformation. Unfortunately, companies using outdated platforms lost at least 5% of sales due to the lack of in-store availability and 70% of money invested into trade promotion programs was unprofitable. In the face of constantly changing regulations and fluctuations, consumer goods companies need to be able to scale and respond quickly, and Aforza’s agile AI predictions are helping customers worldwide drive sales and retain customers.
“Aforza is on a mission to help consumer packaged goods companies get ahead of competition with our cloud and mobile solutions designed specifically for their industry – so they don’t have to cobble together outdated, generic legacy tools,” said Aforza CEO & Co-Founder Dominic Dinardo. “CPG companies around the world are facing challenges like never before, and with Aforza, they can accelerate their growth regardless of what may come next.”
Aforza’s suite of cloud-based and mobile applications provides real-time insights to help CPG companies digitally transform their route to market. It connects commercial planning and field sales teams together to solve the problems of unprofitable promotions, declining market share and lack of revenue growth. With Aforza, business users can quickly launch targeted promotional campaigns in hours versus days without the need for any technical support. Industry cloud-native, Aforza is built on Salesforce and Google Cloud and uses leading technology in CRM, cloud software and AI to deliver a solution that is secure, agile, scalable and able to seamlessly integrate with the tools its customers are already using.
“Building on top of two world-leading cloud platforms, Salesforce and Google Cloud, Aforza is transforming the consumer goods industry in the same way Veeva and Vlocity transformed the Pharma, Telco and Energy sectors.” said Thomas Rubens, Partner at DN Capital. “Aforza is the only cloud platform that seamlessly connects trade planning to field execution in real-time with the most intuitive user experience. This improves the return on trade promotions to a level competing legacy solutions just cannot match. We are extremely excited to partner up with the Aforza team and lead their $22 million Series A round.”
Aforza is easy to install and use immediately without significant training or technical experience – even an eight-year-old can use it. The solution also operates offline and on-device without internet access, giving sales users the flexibility to do business on their own terms in any location.
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“Addressing a need ignored by traditional cloud solutions, Aforza’s modern cloud and AI technology is digitizing the consumer goods industry like never before,” said Bonfire Ventures Partner Brett Queener. “Aforza is that secret weapon behind the smartest companies in an industry that supports an estimated 20 million American employees — more than 10% of U.S. jobs — and uniquely empowers them to adapt to changes in real-time and build emotional connections with their end customers.”
Distell, a globally-recognized producer of alcoholic beverages with a presence on several continents, needed to transform their commercial organization and create a step change in scale that was not possible through organic growth. True to the company’s customer-centric values, Distell is implementing Aforza to digitize the sales team with new tools for effective retail execution, trade promotions management, and marketing campaigns. With these capabilities in place, Distell’s sales team will have in-the-moment insights about where to best focus to maximize revenue growth.
“Success of this transformation is measured by revenue growth across our priority segments. This can only be achieved through a real-time platform that connects marketing, planning and sales together across all channels with new levels of execution, control and visibility” said Craig Price, head of sales centre of excellence at Distell. “It is the ability to execute the perfect visit, every time, with Aforza that will take our business to the next level.”
Another Aforza customer, international distribution company Photos Photiades Distributors (PPD), who distribute for leading brands including Carlsberg and Diageo, seeked to transform their execution standards by introducing real-time sales planning, execution and order capture. With Aforza, PPD can better serve their business users, partner community, and customers by helping them understand consumer behaviour and optimizing their approach to revenue growth.
“The legacy way of working was no longer sustainable with an over-reliance on spreadsheets, manual reporting and ongoing sales training” said Constantinos Andreou, group business systems manager at Photos Photiades Distributors. “Partnering with Aforza gave us the capabilities to transform our sales execution processes with the confidence that they will keep on innovating to address the evolving needs of the industry.”
Aforza serves customers in five continents and in a variety of CPG sectors, including: food and beverage, alcohol, beers and spirits, consumer healthcare, household products, tobacco, pet care, and consumer electronics. Aforza offers a tiered subscription model for customers to pick and choose services that work best for their business needs. Aforza was developed by former Salesforce execs and industry cloud veterans with extensive experience in the CRM and consumer packaged goods markets.
One-third of the world’s spending on consumer goods is in North America. Aforza plans to establish a United States headquarters in the Northeast to aggressively capture the North America market while building out its US-based team. Research and development will also be an area of focus for the company as it looks to advance its solution into e-commerce, payments and digital asset management.
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