Trade+ brings a new level of Trade Promotion Management to MFG/PRO® with the addition of Trade Analytics, Budgeting and Planning to the improved core Administrative components.

The latest budgeting and planning tools are extremely versatile and easy for internal staff and others such as brokers, to learn and use. This increases visibility of the effect of all the promotions and deals created, and their subsequent effect on sales, trade spend, trade margins and the required sales volumes necessary to meet targets.

The new analyzer removes guesswork about ‘where you are’ and ‘where you are going’ providing up to the date sales, promotion and deal performance information whilst updating projections on a daily basis on the likely future position. You can review key performance indicators daily and as a result make decisions and take action before it is too late.

Analysts and executives now have tools to evaluate and analyze all revenue related expenses and liabilities, and not just their sales and trade spend. All general expenses such as spoils, freight, dumped products, and warehousing change, along with all rebate, commission, royalty, administration fees, and incentive program information can be accessed with the same tool. For audit and checking purposes all under line accrual & payment transactions can be easily viewed whilst deduction and claim analyses can all be performed with the analyzer. A good example of this is if you wish to see what your 30, 90, 180 and 360 day deductions are in number and value at the present time, whilst comparing them against previous year’s data.

The new administrative tools extend what was available in APM and TrM. For instance-

• Deduction and claim processing is more stream lined and a single claim can be applied against multiple promotions and non-promotional related expenses.
• Deduction and claim processing capabilities extend into the new planning and analytical tools enabling brokers and sales representatives to view, action and approve deductions and claims if required.
• Pricing capabilities have been dramatically extended to cater for the more complex pricing models so prevalent in some regions and markets.
• Promotion, deal, rebate, commission, royalty, administration fee and incentive accruals are generated on a daily basis, and where appropriate by invoice line. Additionally, if required, these can be posted to the general ledger daily.
• Date-based customer and product grouping, attributing and profiling, enables changes to be entered ahead of time and as they are known, removing the need for bulk update runs.

MFG/PRO is a registered trademark of QAD Inc.