- was just one of the messages from Microsoft to attendees in New Orleans last week for the 2009 Convergence USA conference. The annual occasion brings together Microsoft executives, application specialists, partners, customers and end users who are involved with Microsoft’s Dynamics solutions. The news Flintfox took to the conference with their “Phat Solutions for skinny margins” messaging was make the most you can out of your Trade Spend, and more so in hard times.

While attendance was down from the last couple of years, both the Flintfox US and NZ teams were taken aback by the determination of those they met to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their Trade dollars. As Mike Ridgway put it “Being ineffective with 20% of your revenue is bad enough, but when incremental sales for a Consumer Goods company are so tough to get with the downturn, you really do need the best bang you can get for your TPM buck. And those we met at the show understand that, so we actually had better results this year than usual.”