Blacksmith Applications, a leading provider of SaaS-based trade promotion management and optimization software for consumer packaged goods (CPG) manufacturers, announced today its acquisition of Food Sales Enablers (FSE), bringing together the market-leading CPG trade effectiveness and sales enablement platforms.
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FSE, of Buffalo, New York, provides integrated sales enablement and mobile technology solutions to manufacturers and brokers of all sizes and categories. In a competitive set where CRM solutions simply serve as a repository for data and pipeline tracking, the FSE platform, combined with Blacksmith’s data and applications, will yield offensive sales insights; telling CPGs where to spend their time selling and even what price to offer for a higher-probability win.
The combined company will facilitate end-to-end sales enablement and efficiency through a broad assortment of trade management, promotion optimization, sales execution, and revenue growth solutions. Blacksmith will retain the Food Sales Enablers brand and application as the principal CRM and sales enablement platform for customers, and it will be offered to new clients seeking a user-friendly set of tools for integrated trade spend, contract tracking, data visibility and analytics for market activation.
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“All of us at FSE are excited to be part of this next chapter with Blacksmith,” said Rick Heavern, CEO of Food Sales Enablers. “We wanted to team up with an industry leader who would value our domain knowledge and share our focus on growth, while creating connections between sales and finance organizations for our customers. Our combined solution and complementary customer portfolios will position the broader organization as the leader in CPG sales and finance technology capabilities.”
As part of the transaction, Rick Heavern will join Blacksmith Applications’ leadership team as General Manager of the Food Sales Enablers product division.
“The industry is hungry for technology that helps sales teams pinpoint exactly where net-new opportunities exist. For a long time, ordinary CRM solutions have served as basic activity monitoring systems. They have a purpose, but they haven’t propelled profit,” said Paul Wietecha, President & CEO of Blacksmith Application. “The combination of our trade system data and FSE’s platform and cataloged customer insights will finally deliver an easy enablement solution that puts sales teams back on the attack. We can help them sell more by telling them exactly where to go and even what price point should win the deal. That’s a CRM solution sales teams will get behind.”
Blacksmith Applications, backed by Strattam Capital, has a long history of partnering with the world’s largest and most successful CPG companies and is looking forward to building upon that foundation with current and future customers.
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