Clarkston recently partnered with a $700M family-owned consumer products company to perform an assessment of their trade promotion management processes and supporting technologies. The following case study recounts the TPM assessment project, key objectives, resolutions, and key benefits.

The company recently completed an ERP implementation and as part of that project transitioned their settlement management processes to the ERP system. The organization continued to plan and manage trade promotions within a homegrown Excel-based system.

Download the Full TPM Assessment Case Study Here

Given the limitations of Microsoft Excel, the client asked Clarkston to help them better understand:

1. Industry leading practice for end-to-end trade promotion management
2. Key capabilities they need to invest in to gain competitive advantage
3. Functionality provided by best-in-class TPM systems
4. Gaps in their current systems and processes
5. A roadmap to remediate the identified process & system gaps

Clarkston interviewed over 20 key cross-functional stakeholders to understand the current state pain points and analyze the current system against industry leading practices. Among other findings, the company’s homegrown system was found to have subpar capability in 15 of 28 trade promotion process areas that were assessed. These results highlighted the opportunity ahead to improve both systems and processes.

Clarkston’s collaborative approach during a multi-day workshop was the ideal way to engage the broad group of cross-functional stakeholders. The workshops consisted of education on leading practice as well as discussions about the growth objectives & future state of their business. The workshops culminated in the categorization and prioritization of capabilities needed to achieve the client’s objectives, alongside an associated business case.

Download the Full TPM Assessment Case Study Here

The primary objectives for the TPM assessment project team included understanding the organization’s true requirements for a TPM system, the industry best practices as they relate to TPM system capabilities, and understanding where the client’s current system lags are relative to the industry.

This resulted in a rigorous current state system analysis across Clarkston’s TPM “wheel” and trade system maturity model, a 2-day workshop that brought together 20+ trade stakeholders to review industry best practices and identify future system priorities, and a TPM system roadmap across two different organizational options.

The key benefits for this project included educating the Sales and Trade teams on industry standard for their TPM assessment and system capabilities, identifying specific lagging TPM capabilities, and developing a case for a TPM system implementation that anticipate a $3.67M financial benefit over five years and time savings of up to 17,000 hours for the company.

Download the full TPM Assessment case study here.

Contributions by Eric Gardner