Clarkston Consulting partnered with a client recently on implementing SAP TPM. The client is a globally recognized leader in the beverage space, not only due to the brand’s iconic soft drinks but also its manufacturing and distribution of various nonalcoholic beverages worldwide. The company provides a wide array of beverage products, including water, enhanced water, sports drinks, juices, dairy, plant–based beverages, teas, coffees, and energy drinks. As part of its growth strategy the organization had two key priorities:

1. Become a total beverage company through heavy investment in the growth of non-soft drink business units, and
2. Consolidate the IT infrastructure and functionality across its North America division to SAP

The business was particularly experiencing pain points relative to its existing trade promotion management (TPM) solution, which had come in overschedule and overbudget when originally implemented 3 years prior. Given Clarkston’s expertise in both trade promotion management and SAP solutions, the client engaged Clarkston to ensure a successful implementation of the SAP TPM solution.

Download the Full Implementing SAP TPM Case Study Here

The organization engaged Clarkston Consulting to provide input into the overall project management for implementation of SAP TPM, lead the data standardization workstream between business units to support the overall roadmap, drive implementation design bringing Clarkston’s deep TPM process expertise, and finally manage and execute testing, training, and change management efforts across the user community.

Clarkston Consulting collaborated with the client, SAP, and a third party to achieve a successful implementation of SAP TPM and custom reporting leveraging SAP’s Model Company accelerator. As a result of the project, the business has improved its ability to forecast, track trade spend, and optimize promotional activity across the complex business environment.

Download the Full Implementing SAP TPM Case Study Here

The primary objectives for the implementing SAP TPM project team included: simplifying and standardizing data to have a single source of trade information, streamlining the IT landscape with particular focus to trade systems and data, optimizing all trade spend, and reduce turnaround between functional groups with real-time updates and reporting. Some of the key resolutions for this project includes, but is not limited to:

• provided key CPG industry and trade process expertise to drive the design of trade processes toward industry leading practice and organization best fit, leveraging SAP TPM as the solution
• managed and executed agile UAT and end-to-end testing to escalate and resolve defects as needed
• executed change management efforts continually across multiple platforms to inform and educate the end-user community and the broader organization about the implementation
• developed key knowledge transfer documentation and transitioned remaining action items to hypercare team, as well as training
• identified and mitigated resolution for 23 key design gaps identified during blueprinting
• validated system via ~70 UAT Test Scripts to identify and resolve critical defects

This projecting overall provided better retail execution visibility, enabled smarter data-based decision making for the organization, and provided a higher ROI per trade dollar for the company.

Download the full Implementing SAP TPM Case Study Here.

Contributions by Mansi Vakil