Consumer Goods
Advanced Pricing and Trade Promotion Management for Consumer Goods
In today’s competitive consumer goods market, manufacturers spend 8-30% of gross revenues on trade promotion management 
(TPM) and this percentage continues to rise. Although trade spend represents the #1 controllable overhead for most businesses, for a large proportion there has been relatively little focus on improving the efficiency and effectiveness of trade promotions:
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Budgeting, planning, execution, administration and evaluation of trade promotion activities historically takes place in different functional groups, although decisions made during one phase of the trade promotion management
lifecycle can have dramatic impact on later phases; - Manual, spreadsheet based planning continues to be the method for managing huge trade spend budgets, despite being prone to error and difficult to scale;
- Most organizations have concentrated on removing inventory from the supply chain, but this frequently results in promotional stock-outs when marketing and operations do not collaborate effectively.
New challenges demand fresh solutions
While antiquated tools and processes continue to cost organizations millions of dollars each year, recent changes have dramatically accelerated the imperative to improve performance in this area:
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Industry Trend |
Business Challenge |
Flintfox Solution |
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Dominant |
Diverse promotion mix with agressive targets |
Tracking across the entire TPM lifecycle to drive performance and reduce errors |
|
More invoice adjustments Slower payment |
Seamless deduction, claim and rebate/fee processing to improve cash flow |
|
|
Highly fluctuating commodity prices |
Frequent price updates |
Sophisticated price list management to align prices and |
|
Statutory pressures
|
Increased accountability Improved reporting |
Robust and flexible tools for exception management, reporting and analysis to increase visibility and compliance |
|
Short |
Volatile period to manage profitability goals |
Integration across processes reduces reaction time to optimize share/profitability |
|
Retail confusion |
Effective collaboration to improve retail compliance |
Success from solving the critical issues
Given this industry imperative, most organizations have accumulated significant data and taken preliminary steps to address budgeting, planning, accounting and analysis processes, but most projects fail to provide adequate responses to the critical issues driving trade promotion efficiency and effectiveness.
Flintfox's modular solutions for the consumer goods (CPG & FMCG) sectors allow for full or progressive improvements in managing trade promotions:
- All trade promotion information is in a single repository, easily accessible by decision makers across the entire lifecycle
- This information is comprehensive, reliable, accurate and timely
- It is presented in a meaningful manner with the flexibility to accommodate frequent, ad hoc requests for information
- Planned promotions are measured in terms of all associated costs and net margin contribution to accurately measure a return on trade investment
Solutions
Recent Posts
The Latest Trends and Challenges facing CG manufacturers in Customer Management
Convergence 2013 Round-up
Trade Spend Optimization (TSO): Pure Myth or Reality? - Part III
Trade Spend Optimization (TSO): Pure Myth or Reality? - Part II
Trade Promotion Management for Dynamics
For consumer goods customers that are running their business on, or evaluating Microsoft Dynamics AX, Flintfox’s TPM solution should be a priority consideration"
Hal Howard,
Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Dynamics ERP Research and Development, Microsoft Business Solutions
TPM for Microsoft Dynamics® CRM draws upon Flintfox’s 25 years of experience in supplying TPM solutions, integrating the specialist business logic into Microsoft’s CRM solution, to provide a most comprehensive and straight-forward TPM system for Consumer Goods companies.
What Our Clients Say
Gorton’s Seafoods
Post-audits are also easier because the data is present and accessible and after retailers discover that Gorton’s is prepared, they don’t come in as often, because they know we have the facts.
Bruce Amero - Customer Finance Director, Gorton’s Seafoods
