Challenges

Most consumer goods companies face challenges monitor the activities associated with trade promotions through execution in the market. Traditionally, many companies conduct promotion planning and deal negotiation at regular periods in the year, but are left “blind” when those promotions are in market. Visibility to actual sales performance, consumption of accrual-based funds and budgets, and comparative analysis against competitors is limited to unavailable during the period. Accurate information becomes available only during the post-promotion period, often three to four months after the promotion events. Given the significant cost of revenue allocations made for trade spend, accurately monitoring open financial commitments at any time is simply good business practice. Yet many companies struggle to track this information monthly, often pulling information from multiple systems and spreadsheets. Little wonder then that surprises occur that do not please the CFO and CEO.

Features

• Accurate accrual fund balance netting against all related shipments, orders, and store-level consumption
• Continual monitoring of in market promotion effectiveness based on target goals and transactional sales information
• Real-time exception management related to transaction mismatches such as off-invoice adjustments that do not match promotion agreement terms
• Dynamic pricing management to adjust or respond to exceptions as they occur
• Automated order pricing and invoice settlement processing
• Role-based workflow and exception management from the broker and account managers through sales operations and finance

Benefits

• Proactively monitor and identify transaction errors or exceptions as they occur, reducing total liabilities and related impacts to Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) 5% to 20%
• Improved trade fund budget control, reducing spend variance 3% to 8%
• Improve customer service and collaboration in major accounts with share monitoring and exception management activities during the promotion period
• Improve employee productivity related to sales operations, trade fund management, and financial settlement from 15% to 40%
• Increase response time to trade promotion performance from months to days

Next Steps

To find out how Flintfox Trade Promotion Management can meet your specific needs, contact us. We welcome the opportunity to discuss your situation.