Country Range promotes Katrina Crabtree to head of commercial and data

Country Range Group has promoted Katrina Crabtree to head of commercial & data.

Formerly commercial controller, Crabtree (pictured) has been with CRG for over 17 years and has become an integral part of the senior management team.

As well as still working with a selection of key branded suppliers, Katrina will be leading CRG’s new systems and data projects department, which has received significant investment over the past year and has been highlighted as an area for investment through the group’s recent strategic review.

The new department is developing the CRGDirectory system, a bespoke platform for members to access a number of different portals, all of which create efficiencies for several departments. The platform also helps the central office team to automate many of its existing processes.

An upgraded trading focused Intranet, which is accessed via the CRGDirectory, went live in February. This offers improvements to user experience and search functionality, and there are plans for additional portals relating to technical and complaints processes.

The other portal that members can access via the CRGDirectory is a marketing assets library known as the CRGHub. This has recently been launched to members and will facilitate more effective use of the vast number of assets created by the group, whether that is Country Range brand-related photography, videography, sales support tools or industry insights and reports. The group’s suppliers have also been invited to provide assets and tools that can be viewed and downloaded within the system.

In addition, CRG is upgrading its PIM (Product Information Management) system. The data is currently being enriched with over 60 additional fields, giving members a wider breadth of product data. Information on Country Range brand products is being enriched first and this will be followed by commodities, and then brands later in 2023. CRG’s members are utilising the knowledge and expertise across the group and working together on a larger data validation project.

Quality of data continues to be of the highest priority for CRG in 2023. In addition to the central office, suppliers are increasingly utilising the data that is provided to them via the CRGInsight data platform and CRG is working with them to improve the product categorisation. There are four new customer categories that went live in January 2023. CRG also expects to be commercialising the data with an additional 10 suppliers this year.

Finally, Crabtree’s department will be implementing a new Enable rebate management system, which will give enhanced member tracking, reporting and efficiencies for central office. The member dashboard is new to Enable and is currently in its final testing phase. Following CRG’s initial internal validation processes, it will be contacting suppliers in early March to test the system ahead of a full launch in April 2023.

Martin Ward, Country Range Group chief executive, commented: “With so much happening to our data and systems over the coming year for our members and suppliers, it’s imperative that the transition is managed as smoothly as possible and I have all the confidence in Katrina to deliver.”