Blacksmith TPM Reviews

- The Blacksmith team are experts in Food Service industry, - In the forefront of the direction of Food Service Trade. - Forge System is very intuitive and can be customized to meet our business needs, and provides ability to evolve along with Food Service Industry. - We are currently reviewing upgrading to the newest version in 2018. - Continuously adding system efficiencies into system or process to account complexities that we are faced with - Network of Blacksmith customers - Bi Annual Blacksmith meetings

No cons were added to this review

Functionality of the system was great. Once you had a promotion in place, you could duplicate the promotions and just update the key information (customer, dates, deal allowance). If you were dealing with a distributor, you were able to add additional indirect customers if you dealt with multiple independents to reconcile invoices. You were not forced to add individual promotions for each independent retailer.

If there were too many users on during any particular period, it would bog down the system. This usually happened during planning sessions when 40+ users where on at the same time.

Thanks for your review! We love to hear from our happy customers.

The quicker processing of the deductions and billbacks feature in Forge. The detailed billback reports in Forge Analytics are also great because of how much data you can include in the report.

The concept of the system is actually a great concept. The functionality though needs improvement. Forge and Forge Analytics needs to be consistent in refreshing between systems. The contract management piece in Forge is a great feature, however, it provides too much flexibility for sales to enter contracts and easily revise or duplicate them which in turn causes errors on the Forge Analytics report.

Yassmin, we appreciate your feedback. As an early adopter of FORGE Analytics, we take your input very seriously as we activate continuous improvement to our support and data models. We'll have someone reach out to discuss system choices that can address the sales team permissions you commented on. Thank you for being a valued customer.

The Forge system is very user friendly. The system allows all organizations within a company to understand the effect that the distributor and operator programs have on profitability. Forge allows companies to keep all of their programs in one place so the data and information is accessible to sales, management, finance and reconciliation/settlements departments

The Forge software can be overwhelming to new users. But once the users get a chance to work with the system for a while, they will become very adept at using it.

What I like the most of this software is that you can keep track on claims and deductions so companies won't double dip such as rebates and etc. It's also nice that you can run reports and have the option to imported it in excel. It's been very useful for our company and also saving a lot of money on the long run

What I like the least about the software is that I wish the check numbers would show in more places like in the pending category other than that I do like it very much it's pretty much straight forward and very easy to use

Easy to navigate, search and complete details.

Some fields are a bit confusing and more time consuming than others.

+ The product is intuitive and can be customized to meet our business needs. + Our Blacksmith Business partners are CPG experts and are forward thinking. + Customer service agent provides us with tremendous support and demonstrate a clear understanding of the current (and future) landscape of our Industry. + We recently rolled out the program for our business managers.

- Data configurations can be complex, but there is always a Blacksmith employee to address any questions that we may have. I do not feel there are actual cons with Forge.

In depth industry knowledge makes the features/functionality invaluable Intuitive for users of all experience levels Above and beyond the software, you get a partner Built to be flexible with it's features

Although we realize they are growing at a rapid pace, Customer Support can be a little slow at times. Would like to see a user forum of some type for feedback

I liked the detail the system provided when working on a pending/recalculated claim and the hyper link options available.

The software could have had more customized reporting.

several ways to search for programs, reports are easy to download

I don't understand why updates have such a long black out period. When do mass price increases system is not available for 2 weeks or more.

- The tool is very user friendly. - Customer Support is top notch whenever we are experiencing any difficulties or have any questions. - The Blacksmith team is always willing to help with any system efficiencies to enhance our day to day work. - Being able to network with other Blacksmith users within the industry helps us learn other ways we can utilize this tool across our Foodservice team.

- We experience a few system outages but the team is quick to work on it and fix the issue. - System does run slow every now and then.

The ease of use of this product is amazing! Our user community has had nothing but good things to say about the product. GoSimple has helped our company uncover many, many things that have been swept under the rug in the past. Visibility to spending has been restored and our financial savings as a result of this tool continue to mount. Our company's decision to move to this trade tool has paid off very quickly. Customer services levels are also second to none.

Lack of an established CRM tool and trade spend file for analysis has been our biggest bottleneck. However, we are close to rectifying.

It is easy to use, it is very helpful, it brings clarity to the user, processes are easy to follow, and it gives you clarity if you are doing something wrong within your company that employees might oversee.

Actually nothing, the software works as promised by them.

It is a very user friendly tool and the customer service support levels are extraordinary. The return on investment has been fantastic!

The ability to pull a full trade spend report is currently lacking.

It is user friendly for me because I have used it from the beginning but new users struggle with it.

It seems upgrades that have been done for other manufacturers can create issues for our company that we are unaware of until something isn't working

- The product is easy to teach and understand for new users. - We have great customer support from the Blacksmith Team. - Blacksmith has an awesome community of users that help keep the tool innovative and fresh. - It helps me perform my job daily!

- Can run slowly on some instances, but if there is ever a complete outage, the Blacksmith team has it fixed very quickly and efficiently.

It’s keeps track of expiring pricing memos which was a chore on its own The best part is that it helps us capture money that was deducted when it shouldn’t have been.

One more step to do when offering a pricing memo. You have to input the information. We now have a designated person that takes care of that which helps tremendously.

Rep helping me! And I can easily look up contracts.

Putting in a new program- some features are difficult

It enables each person to keep track of unwanted deductions

A little time consuming entering the data

Ease of use, good info.. seems accurate

Sometimes is bogs down, slow kicks me out

The search function and reporting capabilities are excellent.

At times, especially when revising larger programs with hundreds of items and operator/distributor combinations the program can become very sluggish and unresponsive.

Ease of use, customizable, level of detail able to achieve

Reporting aspect has some challenges but they are working very hard with ya to deliver what’s needed and in the format requested

Customer Service is fantastic. Tool is very easy to learn & use. Provides us with great visibility.

Would like to customize some of the terminology used in the system to match our internal systems.

Easy to filter and find things. Support is amazing

Reports are on going, nothing to run out of the box. New broker security setup can be frustrating because you have to drag it to multiple spots.

Ease of use Flexibility Customer support

Reporting capabilities are somewhat limited