Developing a Custom Trade Promotion Management Tool
Clarkston Consulting recently helped with developing a custom TPM tool for a health and beauty client. Read a synopsis of the project below or download the full case study.
Download the Developing a Custom TPM Tool Case Study Here
This client is a health and beauty company focused on creating products using sustainable practices and natural ingredients.
The client had been leveraging a legacy trade promotion management (TPM) tool to track and manage trade spend but faced difficulties consolidating data across all planning accounts. Consolidating forecasted and accrued sales from seven sales planners required manual data input from various sources, leading to an inefficient process and risk for error. Though the client is early in their adoption of data analytics, they needed a solution to this issue of inefficient data reporting prior to implementing a full trade promotion management tool.
The client sought out a tool that provides reporting insight across forecasted and actualized sales, promotional spend, and term spend while maintaining a user interface that enhanced ease of use and promoted organizational adoption. Clarkston supported the client by using Excel to create individual planning documents for over 40 planning customers and over 150 products that allowed for weekly forecasting at the product level.
To simplify data entry, Clarkston introduced a tool that identifies duplicate item forecasts in the planning customer forecast file. This allowed for simple and efficient error identification and ensured all products are appropriately forecasted across all retailers. To further streamline trade promotion management, the tool utilizes actualized sales for both direct and indirect planning customers. This data is automatically displayed in the item level forecasts and retailer reports.
Additionally, each planner could maintain promotions and terms that incorporated data from forecasted and actual product sales. This data was used to create standardized reports showcasing forecasted vs. actualized promotion and term trade spend and product sales by planning customer. Centralizing this information allows for holistic monthly reports at the retailer and enterprise level, which is utilized to track yearly budget and future forecasting.
