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      • Trade Promotion Optimization Software: Everything You Must Know

        Request For Demo Learn more Trade Promotion Optimization Softwares Everything Know Banner Image

        Our Customers Around The World

        Underline Clientsv3 1
        What Is Trade Promotion Optimization image

        Chapter 1

        What is Trade Promotion Optimization

        Trade Promotion Optimization Myths And Challenges image

        Chapter 2

        Trade Promotion Optimization Myths and Challenges

        Must Have Capabilities In A Trade Promotion Optimization Solution image

        Chapter 3

        Must-have capabilities in a TPO solution

        Artificial Intelligence In Trade Promotion Optimization image

        Chapter 4

        Artificial Intelligence in Trade Promotion Optimization

        What An Ai Powered Promotion Analysis Looks Like image

        Chapter 5

        What an AI-Powered Promotion Analysis Looks Like

        Case Study image

        Chapter 6

        Case-study

        About Compass image

        Chapter 7

        About Compass

        Chapter 1

        What is Trade Promotion Optimization

        This chapter is all about the basics and the current state of CPG trade promotions. It’ll help us get the definitions right before we delve into the actual topic.

        Trade Promotion Optimization

        The Current State of Trade Promotions

        Underline Cpg Trade Promotions

        of CPG trade promotion spending doesn’t drive the desired results

        - Nielsen Holdings

        Trade Promotions

        of the money was lost by most of the manufacturers who invest in trade promotions

        - Booz Allen Hamilton

        Fmcg Trade Promotions

        of trade promotions globally don't break even

        - Nielsen Holdings

        Tpo

        improvement on trade promotion ROI will improve the top line by 10% and operating margins by 3-5%

        - Economic Times Retail

        Even though the trade promotions spend take up a lion’s share of the organizational revenue, traditionally manufacturers have always struggled in optimizing their promotion mix for achieving the maximum bang for the buck. CPG companies typically take a two-step approach to implementing trade promotions – Trade Promotion Optimization and Trade Promotion Management (TPM). Let’s start by establishing the core definitions of both and how they are different from each other.

        Trade Promotion Optimization (TPO): TPO is the process of continuously improving the effectiveness of trade promotion strategies by optimizing them based on your business goals and current supply and promotion constraints. The key objective of TPO is to maximize the value every dollar invested in trade promotions. It follows the famous motto of “Build, Measure, Learn and Repeat”.

        The software which support and enable this entire process is Trade Promotion Optimization Software. These solutions are equipped with a range of predictive modelling, analytics and data harmonization capabilities.

        Trade Promotion Management (TPM): TPM focuses more on the internal execution and operational part of trade promotions. This can include defining new promotions, allocating budgets at various stages for different departments, retail activity management, tracking promotions and managing funds, authorizing payments etc.

        TPM systems lack or have limited forecasting and promotion effectiveness analysis capabilities - things that are critical to profitably optimizing your trade spend
        Chapter 2

        Trade Promotion Optimization Myths and Challenges

        Even though many companies recognize the importance of powerful TPO procedure, organizational and technological challenges often limit teams from implementing an effective TPO. In this chapter we will debunk some popular TPO myths and discuss common challenges.

        Trade Promotion Optimization Myths and Challenges images

        Trade Promotion Optimization Myths

        Underline

        Myth #1 We already have a TPM system in place. We won’t need an additional TPO system

        This is the most common excuse we hear when we talk to CPG companies about their trade promotion challenges. TPM systems are needed to “manage” promotions i.e you can use them to define promotions, track spending or schedule invoices to retailers or any other operational/transactional activities. However, the capabilities of these systems are limited to just planning and execution.

        A majority of TPM solutions can’t integrate data from key influential sources like POS, digital media, weather etc.he post-event analysis and what-if scenario building capabilities are also very limited in most TPM software.

        Always build the trade promotion optimization (TPO) into your trade promotion management approach - Gartner

        Companies should look at choosing a TPO solution which can seamlessly integrate into their existing TPM system. This enables both systems to work in tandem with each other and centralize all your trade promotion activities.

        Read More: 6 Best Practices For Moving From TPM to TPO

        Myth #2 We will face adoption issues from our sales teams

        Any reliable TPO solution should be extremely user-friendly. Advanced visualizations and seamless navigation flows are some key elements to look for while choosing a TPO solution and have elements which will help with better adoption by users.

        In addition, a TPO solution should  automate post-event analysis and data-entry. Without automation, field-sales teams need to manually enter data which is not only unproductive but also prone to human-error. Obtaining  information for better decision making is a huge challenge.

        Integrating AI chatbots with the TPO solution is one another effective way to increase adoption among field-sales personnel. Chatbots simplify the way you interact with data and eliminate the need to switch windows or drill dashboards.

        Read More: 5 Amazing Business Benefits of Data Visualization

        Myth #3 Deploying a new TPO system is both cost and time intensive

        Unlike your typical TPM systems which need a considerable amount of time to go live, TPO systems can be deployed within a few weeks. And while it’s true that these systems can’t really be termed “cost-friendly” but companies need to think about the ROI delivered by these systems.

        Today a mere 15% improvement on Trade Promotion ROI will improve the top line by 10% and operating margins by 3-5%. If you are in the CPG business, you probably must be well aware of the increased competition from local brands in the last decade. And this is most likely to increase further in the coming years.

        In such a scenario, you no longer can afford taking critical business decisions based on gut or partial intelligence or past experiences.

        Success in the CPG industry is largely based on decisions – decisions which are accurate and taken at a lightening speed. While decision-making does depend on several factors, it’s highly important to leverage emerging technologies like TPO solutions which will improve and simplify it.   

        Information is the oil of the 21st century and analysis is the combustion engine - Gartner

        Read More: 5 Trade Promotion Optimization Myths You Need To Stop Believing

        Trade Promotion Optimization Challenges

        Underline

        Challenge # 1 Data Availability

        There are numerous types of data which needs to be considered before devising or optimizing trade promotion strategies. These could include POS data or Syndicated data from data brokers or past promotion data etc. However most companies spend heavily and depend solely on syndicated data for taking decisions.

        Read More: Data Brokers – How Can Consumer Goods Companies Maximize ROI

        While this type of data is important to capture, there are numerous other influential data types which need to be harnessed to increase data accuracy and get a big picture view of reality. Another popular challenge is siloed data. Your POS data remains at one place, syndicated data in another, social media data at some other place. This limits the efficiency and productiveness of decision-makers as they can’t process and analyze data effortlessly.

        Challenge #2 Sole reliance on spreadsheets for data consumption

        Most decision-makers in the CPG business still are reliant on some custom-built spreadsheets for data consumption. Even though many business users are accustomed to using Excel, the lack of flexibility of these sheets decreases the speed and accuracy of decision-making.

        Especially as the amount of data to be processed increases, decision-makers have to spend more time analyzing data and less time gaining insights from it. Also, manual data entry into spreadsheets is very tedious for field-sales teams and prone to human errors.

        Challenge #3 High dependency on IT or MIS teams

        This is another common challenge which disables TPO teams from leveraging data for decision-making. Business teams usually have to depend on highly-skilled crew like IT or MIS personnel or Data Scientists to get new report formats or update the existing ones with the latest data. This is a complicated process and hard to incorporate in the daily work flows of a decision-maker.

        Read More: The 5 major benefits of self-service BI

        Know More About Our Self-Service BI Services

        Challenge #4 Inaccurate post promotion analysis

        Due to the above challenges and various other organization-specific problems, TPO teams cannot powerfully measure the effectiveness of trade promotions and clearly identify low and high yield promotions. Thereby budget and resource allocation cannot be done effectively.

        Challenge #5 Lack of tools with powerful analytical capabilities

        Most companies depend on their typical corporate systems like TPM or ERP systems for trade spend analysis. However, trade promotion planning, measurement and optimization require tools with strong analytical capabilities. A majority of existing TPM systems only offer effective control mechanisms.

        Challenge #6 Focus on incorrect metrics

        Even though there is a quick realization that profitability carries more weight than volume, business teams – from field sales to marketing are still focusing on volume. But volume and profitable volume are two entirely different things. Focus on achieving profit should be embedded within every department of the organization.

        Read More: Trade Promotion Optimization: Challanges and How AI Can Help

        Chapter 3

        Must-have capabilities in a Trade Promotion Optimization solution

        The TPO software market is huge and there are numerous vendors who promise a wide-range of features. In this chapter, we’ll explore some important capabilities you must look for while evaluating solutions.

        Must-have capabilities in a Trade Promotion Optimization solution image

        It’s imperative to understand the different steps involved in trade promotion optimization and important capabilities required to effectively execute each step.

        6 key steps of trade promotion optimization

        Underline Data Integration image

        Data integration and harmonization

        Active sales image

        Promotion effectiveness measurement and analysis

        Sales Forcasting image

        Sales
        forecasting

        Promotion Optimization image

        Promotion optimization

        Publishing To Tpm Solution image

        Publishing to TPM solution

        Bussiness Adoption image

        Business Adoption

        1. Data integration and harmonization

        In most CPG companies data is stored in disparate silos, disabling decision-makers to have holistic view of reality. An effective TPO solution should be able to bring together high-quality real-time data from different internal and external sources with no errors. Ideally the solution should also have data cleansing capability to ensure consistent and accurate data.

        To ensure data accuracy, the solution should also be fed with data from multiple influential data sources and market touch points. This combined raw data acts as a strong foundation on which a powerful analysis can be run to glean insights.

        Important data sources your TPO solution should capture

        Underline Different types of data compass captures images

        1. Internal data

        • Market research: Market, consumer and competitor information from analysts.
        • Past promotions: Information on different trade promotions run for different products and their effectiveness.
        • Primary sales: Sales from the manufacturer to distributor/retailer
        • Secondary sales: Sales from the distributor/ retailer to the end customer.
        • Marketing campaigns: Ongoing and future marketing activities that can impact your trade promotion ROI.
        • Point of Sales: The basket of items which a customer buys at a retail outlet
        Read More: POS Data Analysis – How Can Retailers and Consumer Goods Companies Make the Most of it Trade Promotion Optimization: Challanges and How AI Can Help
        Check out our POS Analytics Solutions

        2. External data

        • Syndicated data: Data from Nielsen, IRI, SPINS and other data brokers etc.
        • Weather: Consumer behaviours change based on seasons or environmental factors like flu, pollen etc. and this can impact your sales or trade promotions. The TPO solution should be integrated with past, future and current weather data.

        Read More: How Weather Impacts Retail Sales & How Big Data Analytics Can Help

        Check Out Our Weather Analytics Solution
        • Events: Major events like a famous musician’s performance or a sporting event can alter consumers’ behaviour towards certain type of products (ex: A football event can trigger more sales for a beverage)
        • Digital Media: 
        • 58% of survey respondents rate their capabilities at the intersection of digital and trade promotion as “lagging" Promotion Optimization Institute
        • As digital marketing continue to increase in the consumer goods business, it is essential to learn what consumers are searching for, tweeting about, how they are mentioning your and competitor brand or responding to particular Facebook or Instagram campaign and so on. However this type of data is largely unstructured and generated real-time.

          Traditional TPO solutions miss this vital information. If you are evaluating vendors, ensure their solution captures and harnesses digital data. An ideal TPO solution needs to provide a comprehensive and single window view of all types of data and reports.

        Read More: Our Data Integration Services

        2. Promotion effectiveness measurement and analysis

        The current obstacle to more meaningful post-event analytics is that it largely lacks automation - Promotion Optimization Institute

        Automate Post-Event Analysis

        Post-promotion/event analysis is a key feature of any TPO solution. Lack of automation results in manual compiling of data and over burdening of your field sales teams.

        In a POI research, it is found that only 39% of CG companies have some level of automation in their TPO solution. Automation allows you to see the performance of as many promotions as you want and as often as you want. It also relieves burden on your field teams and eliminates human-error which can occur due to manual data-entry.

        In-depth Insights

        Promotion effectiveness dashboard image

        The solution should display key metrics like growth, sales uplift, ROI, volume, profitability for every promotion and offer the flexibility to view at brand, location, retailer levels.

        Check Out Our Post Promotion Analytics Solutions

        3. Promotion forecasting and planning

        Post-promotion/event analysis is a key feature of any TPO solution. Lack of automation results in manual compiling of data and over burdening of your field sales teams.

        In a POI research, it is found that only 39% of CG companies have some level of automation in their TPO solution. Automation allows you to see the performance of as many promotions as you want and as often as you want. It also relieves burden on your field teams and eliminates human-error which can occur due to manual data-entry.

        4. Promotion optimization

        The solution should be able to optimize trade spend based on the given promotion combinations forecasted and recommend which promotions should be run based on

        a.The constraints defined. eg: budget for a region.

        b.The objectives which need to be achieved i.e either to increase volume or gain market share or increase revenue or increase profit.

        The solution should allow the planner to simulate various promotion scenarios and pick the best scenario based on the sales uplift and profit predicted for various scenarios.

        5. Publishing to TPM solution

        The solution should seamlessly integrate into your existing TPM and ERP systems and allow you to schedule and publish plans to your sales teams.

        6 Business Adoption

        TPO initiatives usually fail because of the required change management. And Business users face challenges with learning to use the solution and getting access to information and data to make better decisions. As a result they go back to the old way of using  custom-built excel sheets to make their decisions . This challenge can be overcome by embedding AI chatbots into the TPO solution.

        Chapter 4

        Artificial Intelligence in Trade Promotion Optimization

        According to Gartner, AI technologies will be in almost every software product by 2020. And TPO systems are no different. Modern trade promotion optimization solutions are leveraging AI to harness data and produce actionable intelligence.

        Artificial Intelligence in Trade Promotion Optimization image

        Traditional analytics like descriptive and diagnostic analytics have always been a part of TPO solutions. While these analytics technologies do provide some key insights, most of them are non-actionable.

        Consumer Goods and Retail businesses produce massive amounts of data every day and an powerful harnessing of this humongous data requires advanced technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

        Advanced analytics like predictive and prescriptive analytics are powered with AI and machine learning and add the much needed “intelligence” part to the TPO software. Unlike traditional analytics which provide shallow insights, Advanced analytics turn data into meaningful insights – insights which are actionable and enable you to take a decision quickly and more accurately.

        Traditional Analytics

        • What happened
        • How Many
        • How Often etc.
        • Why is this happening ?

        Predictive and Prescriptive Analytics

        • What happened
        • How Many
        • How often
        • Why is this happening?
        • What will happen in the future and what should i do about it?
        • Which promotions are delivering the highest ROI and why?
        • What is the lost sales percentage?
        • What is the right promotion mix strategy for the upcoming quarter?
        • How can I maximize my trade promotion ROI?
        • What is my expected ROI if I price Brand A 3 USD more than Brand B for the next 3 months?
        • What are my predicted sales if I keep Brand A at base price for the next 6 months and promote Brand B for a BOGO for the next 1 month?
        • What is the retailer performance in a location for a specific time period and for a specific product?

        Build What-if scenario scenarios

        Advanced analytics allow you to build different virtual promotional scenarios and gives the estimated ROI in each scenario. This estimated ROI is provided based on the harnessing of the data fed to the software. You can build different scenarios by changing different parameters like brand, price, promotion, location, duration etc. and learn the estimated ROI and sales uplift before actually running the promotion.

        Examples

        1. What is my estimated ROI if I run a BOGO for Brand A for 2 months at City B for Price C?
        2. What will be my sales uplift if I offer half price for Brand X and keep Brand Y at base price for the next 1 month?

        Identify trends and patterns in the data

        Advanced analytics leverage machine learning to capture trends in your past promotions and their impact which you might not be aware of. This can include alerting you if there is a dip in sales or if there is an increase in promotion ROI etc. This data discovery helps you take better decisions and run promotions that matter.

        Leverage unstructured data

        Unstructured content already accounts for a staggering 90 percent of all digital data, much of which is locked away across a variety of different data stores, in different locations and in varying formats - IDC

        Data from crucial data sources like digital and social media, TRP, events, POS are largely unstructured and cannot be harnessed by traditional analytics. Big data and AI technologies such as Machine Learning (ML) harness and convert this raw, unstructured data into meaningful insights.

        Get fact-based recommendations and forecasts

        Based on the data fed, advanced analytics provide recommendations and tell you what can be the next best step. You can get crisp prescriptions like “Run promotion A for location B for 1 month to get sales uplift on Y percent”, allowing you to glean insights from the analysis instead of you doing the tedious data analysis process and deciding by yourself.

        Read More: A Quick Guide To Choosing a Trade Promotion Optimization Software

        Chapter 5

        What an AI-Powered Promotion Analysis Looks Like

        Check out the different dashboards of our AI enabled TPO solution - Compass

        AI-Powered Promotion Analysis image

        Measure Trade Promotion Effectiveness

        Cpg promotion effectiveness image

        Compare sales with various parameters

        Compass promotion plan image

        Actual sales vs Predicted
        Sales

        predicted chart image

        Get a 360-degree view on impact of sales

        sales portal dashboard images
        Chapter 6

        Case study

        Acuvate reduces trade promotion spend for a transnational Consumer Goods company by 100k USD

        Case-study images

        About the Company

        Underline

        It is a transnational consumer goods company co-headquartered in Netherlands and London, United Kingdom.

        Its products include several food and beverage, cleaning agents and personal care products. It is the world's largest consumer goods company (measured by 2012 revenue) and the world's largest producer of food spreads.

        It is Europe’s 7th-most valuable company and one of the oldest multinational companies with products across 190 countries.

        1. Business Scenario

        • The Client had a challenge in calculating and monitoring the the Sales Uplift for various promotions being run in the emerging markets.

          The sales and revenue management teams had a promotion calendar which is defined in Excel sheets. The company purchased only the sales and market share data from Nielsen Holdings and don’t have the crucial data of past promotions and pricing.

          This impacted the accuracy in decision-making and teams were unable to analyze

          1. The impact and effectiveness of various promotions on different products.
          2. The sales uplift created by each promotion.

          As a result identifying the right promotion for the right scenario became a challenge.

        2. Solution

        • Acuvate used its domain and technology expertise to meet the client’s requirement. The solution was used for two markets and one category.

          The solution included

          • Extracting data from spreadsheets and integrating the same into a Data Mart
          • Calculating the base sales by comparing periods where Promotions were not present for an SKU
          • Calculating the Sales Uplift and growth for each Promotion

          This solution allowed the sales and revenue management teams to identify

          • Which promotions were creating an uplift and for which specific SKUs.
          • Which SKUs were negatively impacted by the promotions run.

        3. Benefits and Features

        • Using the solution, users were able to

               a) Identify the Sales Uplift vs Target for each promotion.

              b) Increase sales by getting actionable recommendations on the best promotions to be run and understanding which ones work.

              c) Set alerts if the Sales uplift goes below a specific number.

              d) View dashboards on mobile and ask natural language questions as well to get the needed data.

        ROI

        Underline Reduced image

        Reduced Trade Promotions spend by 100K USD

        Reduced In Manual image

        Reduced In Manual effort by 500 person hours

        Increased Revenue image

        Increased
        revenue

        Faster Decisions image

        Faster decisions through actionable recommendations and analysis

        Chapter 7

        About Compass

        Retail Business Intelligence Solution banner image

        Explore Acuvate’s Trade Promotion Optimization Software, Compass.

        Compass is Acuvate’s Trade Promotion Optimization software which leverages Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and Advanced Analytics. It is created on the primary motto of making data work to get maximum bang for the buck for your trade promotions. Measure, Forecast, Analyze, Optimize and Repeat.

        Key Capability image

        The different features of Compass

        Underline

        High-Quality Data Lake

        1. Capture data from multiple
          external and internal
          sources including digital
          media, weather, events,
          POS, competitor intelligence
          and beyond.
        2. Cleanse the data to remove
          duplicates and also
          effectively organize the
          Same.
        3. Convert Unstructured data
          to structured.

        AI & Machine Learning

        1. Run promotions with an intelligent and convenient analysis of data.
        2. Detect key insights and anomalies in promotional data
        3. Unlike traditional analytics which provides shallow insights, predictive and prescriptive analytics forecast and prescribes the right actions to maximize the ROI of your promotions.
        4. Crucial what-if scenarios will be addressed as well.

        AI Bots & Advanced Visualizations

        1. Simplify the way you consume data from the TPO software with chatbots
        2. See data in the most convenient and visually-rich formats with advanced visualizations

        Solution Benefits & Features

        1. Create customizable reports and dashboards without depending on skilled crew
        2. Easy to use for both power and non-power users

        How Compass Works?

        Underline Fmcg analysis

        Related Articles

        Underline

        Request a Demo

        Underline
      • Trade Promotion Forecasting
        • Trade Promotion Optimization Software: Everything You Must Know

          Request For Demo Learn more Trade Promotion Optimization Softwares Everything Know Banner Image

          Our Customers Around The World

          Underline Clientsv3 1
          What Is Trade Promotion Optimization image

          Chapter 1

          What is Trade Promotion Optimization

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths And Challenges image

          Chapter 2

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths and Challenges

          Must Have Capabilities In A Trade Promotion Optimization Solution image

          Chapter 3

          Must-have capabilities in a TPO solution

          Artificial Intelligence In Trade Promotion Optimization image

          Chapter 4

          Artificial Intelligence in Trade Promotion Optimization

          What An Ai Powered Promotion Analysis Looks Like image

          Chapter 5

          What an AI-Powered Promotion Analysis Looks Like

          Case Study image

          Chapter 6

          Case-study

          About Compass image

          Chapter 7

          About Compass

          Chapter 1

          What is Trade Promotion Optimization

          This chapter is all about the basics and the current state of CPG trade promotions. It’ll help us get the definitions right before we delve into the actual topic.

          Trade Promotion Optimization

          The Current State of Trade Promotions

          Underline Cpg Trade Promotions

          of CPG trade promotion spending doesn’t drive the desired results

          - Nielsen Holdings

          Trade Promotions

          of the money was lost by most of the manufacturers who invest in trade promotions

          - Booz Allen Hamilton

          Fmcg Trade Promotions

          of trade promotions globally don't break even

          - Nielsen Holdings

          Tpo

          improvement on trade promotion ROI will improve the top line by 10% and operating margins by 3-5%

          - Economic Times Retail

          Even though the trade promotions spend take up a lion’s share of the organizational revenue, traditionally manufacturers have always struggled in optimizing their promotion mix for achieving the maximum bang for the buck. CPG companies typically take a two-step approach to implementing trade promotions – Trade Promotion Optimization and Trade Promotion Management (TPM). Let’s start by establishing the core definitions of both and how they are different from each other.

          Trade Promotion Optimization (TPO): TPO is the process of continuously improving the effectiveness of trade promotion strategies by optimizing them based on your business goals and current supply and promotion constraints. The key objective of TPO is to maximize the value every dollar invested in trade promotions. It follows the famous motto of “Build, Measure, Learn and Repeat”.

          The software which support and enable this entire process is Trade Promotion Optimization Software. These solutions are equipped with a range of predictive modelling, analytics and data harmonization capabilities.

          Trade Promotion Management (TPM): TPM focuses more on the internal execution and operational part of trade promotions. This can include defining new promotions, allocating budgets at various stages for different departments, retail activity management, tracking promotions and managing funds, authorizing payments etc.

          TPM systems lack or have limited forecasting and promotion effectiveness analysis capabilities - things that are critical to profitably optimizing your trade spend
          Chapter 2

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths and Challenges

          Even though many companies recognize the importance of powerful TPO procedure, organizational and technological challenges often limit teams from implementing an effective TPO. In this chapter we will debunk some popular TPO myths and discuss common challenges.

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths and Challenges images

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths

          Underline

          Myth #1 We already have a TPM system in place. We won’t need an additional TPO system

          This is the most common excuse we hear when we talk to CPG companies about their trade promotion challenges. TPM systems are needed to “manage” promotions i.e you can use them to define promotions, track spending or schedule invoices to retailers or any other operational/transactional activities. However, the capabilities of these systems are limited to just planning and execution.

          A majority of TPM solutions can’t integrate data from key influential sources like POS, digital media, weather etc.he post-event analysis and what-if scenario building capabilities are also very limited in most TPM software.

          Always build the trade promotion optimization (TPO) into your trade promotion management approach - Gartner

          Companies should look at choosing a TPO solution which can seamlessly integrate into their existing TPM system. This enables both systems to work in tandem with each other and centralize all your trade promotion activities.

          Read More: 6 Best Practices For Moving From TPM to TPO

          Myth #2 We will face adoption issues from our sales teams

          Any reliable TPO solution should be extremely user-friendly. Advanced visualizations and seamless navigation flows are some key elements to look for while choosing a TPO solution and have elements which will help with better adoption by users.

          In addition, a TPO solution should  automate post-event analysis and data-entry. Without automation, field-sales teams need to manually enter data which is not only unproductive but also prone to human-error. Obtaining  information for better decision making is a huge challenge.

          Integrating AI chatbots with the TPO solution is one another effective way to increase adoption among field-sales personnel. Chatbots simplify the way you interact with data and eliminate the need to switch windows or drill dashboards.

          Read More: 5 Amazing Business Benefits of Data Visualization

          Myth #3 Deploying a new TPO system is both cost and time intensive

          Unlike your typical TPM systems which need a considerable amount of time to go live, TPO systems can be deployed within a few weeks. And while it’s true that these systems can’t really be termed “cost-friendly” but companies need to think about the ROI delivered by these systems.

          Today a mere 15% improvement on Trade Promotion ROI will improve the top line by 10% and operating margins by 3-5%. If you are in the CPG business, you probably must be well aware of the increased competition from local brands in the last decade. And this is most likely to increase further in the coming years.

          In such a scenario, you no longer can afford taking critical business decisions based on gut or partial intelligence or past experiences.

          Success in the CPG industry is largely based on decisions – decisions which are accurate and taken at a lightening speed. While decision-making does depend on several factors, it’s highly important to leverage emerging technologies like TPO solutions which will improve and simplify it.   

          Information is the oil of the 21st century and analysis is the combustion engine - Gartner

          Read More: 5 Trade Promotion Optimization Myths You Need To Stop Believing

          Trade Promotion Optimization Challenges

          Underline

          Challenge # 1 Data Availability

          There are numerous types of data which needs to be considered before devising or optimizing trade promotion strategies. These could include POS data or Syndicated data from data brokers or past promotion data etc. However most companies spend heavily and depend solely on syndicated data for taking decisions.

          Read More: Data Brokers – How Can Consumer Goods Companies Maximize ROI

          While this type of data is important to capture, there are numerous other influential data types which need to be harnessed to increase data accuracy and get a big picture view of reality. Another popular challenge is siloed data. Your POS data remains at one place, syndicated data in another, social media data at some other place. This limits the efficiency and productiveness of decision-makers as they can’t process and analyze data effortlessly.

          Challenge #2 Sole reliance on spreadsheets for data consumption

          Most decision-makers in the CPG business still are reliant on some custom-built spreadsheets for data consumption. Even though many business users are accustomed to using Excel, the lack of flexibility of these sheets decreases the speed and accuracy of decision-making.

          Especially as the amount of data to be processed increases, decision-makers have to spend more time analyzing data and less time gaining insights from it. Also, manual data entry into spreadsheets is very tedious for field-sales teams and prone to human errors.

          Challenge #3 High dependency on IT or MIS teams

          This is another common challenge which disables TPO teams from leveraging data for decision-making. Business teams usually have to depend on highly-skilled crew like IT or MIS personnel or Data Scientists to get new report formats or update the existing ones with the latest data. This is a complicated process and hard to incorporate in the daily work flows of a decision-maker.

          Read More: The 5 major benefits of self-service BI

          Know More About Our Self-Service BI Services

          Challenge #4 Inaccurate post promotion analysis

          Due to the above challenges and various other organization-specific problems, TPO teams cannot powerfully measure the effectiveness of trade promotions and clearly identify low and high yield promotions. Thereby budget and resource allocation cannot be done effectively.

          Challenge #5 Lack of tools with powerful analytical capabilities

          Most companies depend on their typical corporate systems like TPM or ERP systems for trade spend analysis. However, trade promotion planning, measurement and optimization require tools with strong analytical capabilities. A majority of existing TPM systems only offer effective control mechanisms.

          Challenge #6 Focus on incorrect metrics

          Even though there is a quick realization that profitability carries more weight than volume, business teams – from field sales to marketing are still focusing on volume. But volume and profitable volume are two entirely different things. Focus on achieving profit should be embedded within every department of the organization.

          Read More: Trade Promotion Optimization: Challanges and How AI Can Help

          Chapter 3

          Must-have capabilities in a Trade Promotion Optimization solution

          The TPO software market is huge and there are numerous vendors who promise a wide-range of features. In this chapter, we’ll explore some important capabilities you must look for while evaluating solutions.

          Must-have capabilities in a Trade Promotion Optimization solution image

          It’s imperative to understand the different steps involved in trade promotion optimization and important capabilities required to effectively execute each step.

          6 key steps of trade promotion optimization

          Underline Data Integration image

          Data integration and harmonization

          Active sales image

          Promotion effectiveness measurement and analysis

          Sales Forcasting image

          Sales
          forecasting

          Promotion Optimization image

          Promotion optimization

          Publishing To Tpm Solution image

          Publishing to TPM solution

          Bussiness Adoption image

          Business Adoption

          1. Data integration and harmonization

          In most CPG companies data is stored in disparate silos, disabling decision-makers to have holistic view of reality. An effective TPO solution should be able to bring together high-quality real-time data from different internal and external sources with no errors. Ideally the solution should also have data cleansing capability to ensure consistent and accurate data.

          To ensure data accuracy, the solution should also be fed with data from multiple influential data sources and market touch points. This combined raw data acts as a strong foundation on which a powerful analysis can be run to glean insights.

          Important data sources your TPO solution should capture

          Underline Different types of data compass captures images

          1. Internal data

          • Market research: Market, consumer and competitor information from analysts.
          • Past promotions: Information on different trade promotions run for different products and their effectiveness.
          • Primary sales: Sales from the manufacturer to distributor/retailer
          • Secondary sales: Sales from the distributor/ retailer to the end customer.
          • Marketing campaigns: Ongoing and future marketing activities that can impact your trade promotion ROI.
          • Point of Sales: The basket of items which a customer buys at a retail outlet
          Read More: POS Data Analysis – How Can Retailers and Consumer Goods Companies Make the Most of it Trade Promotion Optimization: Challanges and How AI Can Help
          Check out our POS Analytics Solutions

          2. External data

          • Syndicated data: Data from Nielsen, IRI, SPINS and other data brokers etc.
          • Weather: Consumer behaviours change based on seasons or environmental factors like flu, pollen etc. and this can impact your sales or trade promotions. The TPO solution should be integrated with past, future and current weather data.

          Read More: How Weather Impacts Retail Sales & How Big Data Analytics Can Help

          Check Out Our Weather Analytics Solution
          • Events: Major events like a famous musician’s performance or a sporting event can alter consumers’ behaviour towards certain type of products (ex: A football event can trigger more sales for a beverage)
          • Digital Media: 
          • 58% of survey respondents rate their capabilities at the intersection of digital and trade promotion as “lagging" Promotion Optimization Institute
          • As digital marketing continue to increase in the consumer goods business, it is essential to learn what consumers are searching for, tweeting about, how they are mentioning your and competitor brand or responding to particular Facebook or Instagram campaign and so on. However this type of data is largely unstructured and generated real-time.

            Traditional TPO solutions miss this vital information. If you are evaluating vendors, ensure their solution captures and harnesses digital data. An ideal TPO solution needs to provide a comprehensive and single window view of all types of data and reports.

          Read More: Our Data Integration Services

          2. Promotion effectiveness measurement and analysis

          The current obstacle to more meaningful post-event analytics is that it largely lacks automation - Promotion Optimization Institute

          Automate Post-Event Analysis

          Post-promotion/event analysis is a key feature of any TPO solution. Lack of automation results in manual compiling of data and over burdening of your field sales teams.

          In a POI research, it is found that only 39% of CG companies have some level of automation in their TPO solution. Automation allows you to see the performance of as many promotions as you want and as often as you want. It also relieves burden on your field teams and eliminates human-error which can occur due to manual data-entry.

          In-depth Insights

          Promotion effectiveness dashboard image

          The solution should display key metrics like growth, sales uplift, ROI, volume, profitability for every promotion and offer the flexibility to view at brand, location, retailer levels.

          Check Out Our Post Promotion Analytics Solutions

          3. Promotion forecasting and planning

          Post-promotion/event analysis is a key feature of any TPO solution. Lack of automation results in manual compiling of data and over burdening of your field sales teams.

          In a POI research, it is found that only 39% of CG companies have some level of automation in their TPO solution. Automation allows you to see the performance of as many promotions as you want and as often as you want. It also relieves burden on your field teams and eliminates human-error which can occur due to manual data-entry.

          4. Promotion optimization

          The solution should be able to optimize trade spend based on the given promotion combinations forecasted and recommend which promotions should be run based on

          a.The constraints defined. eg: budget for a region.

          b.The objectives which need to be achieved i.e either to increase volume or gain market share or increase revenue or increase profit.

          The solution should allow the planner to simulate various promotion scenarios and pick the best scenario based on the sales uplift and profit predicted for various scenarios.

          5. Publishing to TPM solution

          The solution should seamlessly integrate into your existing TPM and ERP systems and allow you to schedule and publish plans to your sales teams.

          6 Business Adoption

          TPO initiatives usually fail because of the required change management. And Business users face challenges with learning to use the solution and getting access to information and data to make better decisions. As a result they go back to the old way of using  custom-built excel sheets to make their decisions . This challenge can be overcome by embedding AI chatbots into the TPO solution.

          Chapter 4

          Artificial Intelligence in Trade Promotion Optimization

          According to Gartner, AI technologies will be in almost every software product by 2020. And TPO systems are no different. Modern trade promotion optimization solutions are leveraging AI to harness data and produce actionable intelligence.

          Artificial Intelligence in Trade Promotion Optimization image

          Traditional analytics like descriptive and diagnostic analytics have always been a part of TPO solutions. While these analytics technologies do provide some key insights, most of them are non-actionable.

          Consumer Goods and Retail businesses produce massive amounts of data every day and an powerful harnessing of this humongous data requires advanced technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

          Advanced analytics like predictive and prescriptive analytics are powered with AI and machine learning and add the much needed “intelligence” part to the TPO software. Unlike traditional analytics which provide shallow insights, Advanced analytics turn data into meaningful insights – insights which are actionable and enable you to take a decision quickly and more accurately.

          Traditional Analytics

          • What happened
          • How Many
          • How Often etc.
          • Why is this happening ?

          Predictive and Prescriptive Analytics

          • What happened
          • How Many
          • How often
          • Why is this happening?
          • What will happen in the future and what should i do about it?
          • Which promotions are delivering the highest ROI and why?
          • What is the lost sales percentage?
          • What is the right promotion mix strategy for the upcoming quarter?
          • How can I maximize my trade promotion ROI?
          • What is my expected ROI if I price Brand A 3 USD more than Brand B for the next 3 months?
          • What are my predicted sales if I keep Brand A at base price for the next 6 months and promote Brand B for a BOGO for the next 1 month?
          • What is the retailer performance in a location for a specific time period and for a specific product?

          Build What-if scenario scenarios

          Advanced analytics allow you to build different virtual promotional scenarios and gives the estimated ROI in each scenario. This estimated ROI is provided based on the harnessing of the data fed to the software. You can build different scenarios by changing different parameters like brand, price, promotion, location, duration etc. and learn the estimated ROI and sales uplift before actually running the promotion.

          Examples

          1. What is my estimated ROI if I run a BOGO for Brand A for 2 months at City B for Price C?
          2. What will be my sales uplift if I offer half price for Brand X and keep Brand Y at base price for the next 1 month?

          Identify trends and patterns in the data

          Advanced analytics leverage machine learning to capture trends in your past promotions and their impact which you might not be aware of. This can include alerting you if there is a dip in sales or if there is an increase in promotion ROI etc. This data discovery helps you take better decisions and run promotions that matter.

          Leverage unstructured data

          Unstructured content already accounts for a staggering 90 percent of all digital data, much of which is locked away across a variety of different data stores, in different locations and in varying formats - IDC

          Data from crucial data sources like digital and social media, TRP, events, POS are largely unstructured and cannot be harnessed by traditional analytics. Big data and AI technologies such as Machine Learning (ML) harness and convert this raw, unstructured data into meaningful insights.

          Get fact-based recommendations and forecasts

          Based on the data fed, advanced analytics provide recommendations and tell you what can be the next best step. You can get crisp prescriptions like “Run promotion A for location B for 1 month to get sales uplift on Y percent”, allowing you to glean insights from the analysis instead of you doing the tedious data analysis process and deciding by yourself.

          Read More: A Quick Guide To Choosing a Trade Promotion Optimization Software

          Chapter 5

          What an AI-Powered Promotion Analysis Looks Like

          Check out the different dashboards of our AI enabled TPO solution - Compass

          AI-Powered Promotion Analysis image

          Measure Trade Promotion Effectiveness

          Cpg promotion effectiveness image

          Compare sales with various parameters

          Compass promotion plan image

          Actual sales vs Predicted
          Sales

          predicted chart image

          Get a 360-degree view on impact of sales

          sales portal dashboard images
          Chapter 6

          Case study

          Acuvate reduces trade promotion spend for a transnational Consumer Goods company by 100k USD

          Case-study images

          About the Company

          Underline

          It is a transnational consumer goods company co-headquartered in Netherlands and London, United Kingdom.

          Its products include several food and beverage, cleaning agents and personal care products. It is the world's largest consumer goods company (measured by 2012 revenue) and the world's largest producer of food spreads.

          It is Europe’s 7th-most valuable company and one of the oldest multinational companies with products across 190 countries.

          1. Business Scenario

          • The Client had a challenge in calculating and monitoring the the Sales Uplift for various promotions being run in the emerging markets.

            The sales and revenue management teams had a promotion calendar which is defined in Excel sheets. The company purchased only the sales and market share data from Nielsen Holdings and don’t have the crucial data of past promotions and pricing.

            This impacted the accuracy in decision-making and teams were unable to analyze

            1. The impact and effectiveness of various promotions on different products.
            2. The sales uplift created by each promotion.

            As a result identifying the right promotion for the right scenario became a challenge.

          2. Solution

          • Acuvate used its domain and technology expertise to meet the client’s requirement. The solution was used for two markets and one category.

            The solution included

            • Extracting data from spreadsheets and integrating the same into a Data Mart
            • Calculating the base sales by comparing periods where Promotions were not present for an SKU
            • Calculating the Sales Uplift and growth for each Promotion

            This solution allowed the sales and revenue management teams to identify

            • Which promotions were creating an uplift and for which specific SKUs.
            • Which SKUs were negatively impacted by the promotions run.

          3. Benefits and Features

          • Using the solution, users were able to

                 a) Identify the Sales Uplift vs Target for each promotion.

                b) Increase sales by getting actionable recommendations on the best promotions to be run and understanding which ones work.

                c) Set alerts if the Sales uplift goes below a specific number.

                d) View dashboards on mobile and ask natural language questions as well to get the needed data.

          ROI

          Underline Reduced image

          Reduced Trade Promotions spend by 100K USD

          Reduced In Manual image

          Reduced In Manual effort by 500 person hours

          Increased Revenue image

          Increased
          revenue

          Faster Decisions image

          Faster decisions through actionable recommendations and analysis

          Chapter 7

          About Compass

          Retail Business Intelligence Solution banner image

          Explore Acuvate’s Trade Promotion Optimization Software, Compass.

          Compass is Acuvate’s Trade Promotion Optimization software which leverages Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and Advanced Analytics. It is created on the primary motto of making data work to get maximum bang for the buck for your trade promotions. Measure, Forecast, Analyze, Optimize and Repeat.

          Key Capability image

          The different features of Compass

          Underline

          High-Quality Data Lake

          1. Capture data from multiple
            external and internal
            sources including digital
            media, weather, events,
            POS, competitor intelligence
            and beyond.
          2. Cleanse the data to remove
            duplicates and also
            effectively organize the
            Same.
          3. Convert Unstructured data
            to structured.

          AI & Machine Learning

          1. Run promotions with an intelligent and convenient analysis of data.
          2. Detect key insights and anomalies in promotional data
          3. Unlike traditional analytics which provides shallow insights, predictive and prescriptive analytics forecast and prescribes the right actions to maximize the ROI of your promotions.
          4. Crucial what-if scenarios will be addressed as well.

          AI Bots & Advanced Visualizations

          1. Simplify the way you consume data from the TPO software with chatbots
          2. See data in the most convenient and visually-rich formats with advanced visualizations

          Solution Benefits & Features

          1. Create customizable reports and dashboards without depending on skilled crew
          2. Easy to use for both power and non-power users

          How Compass Works?

          Underline Fmcg analysis

          Related Articles

          Underline

          Request a Demo

          Underline
      • Trade Promotion Optimization Software
        • Trade Promotion Optimization Software: Everything You Must Know

          Request For Demo Learn more Trade Promotion Optimization Softwares Everything Know Banner Image

          Our Customers Around The World

          Underline Clientsv3 1
          What Is Trade Promotion Optimization image

          Chapter 1

          What is Trade Promotion Optimization

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths And Challenges image

          Chapter 2

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths and Challenges

          Must Have Capabilities In A Trade Promotion Optimization Solution image

          Chapter 3

          Must-have capabilities in a TPO solution

          Artificial Intelligence In Trade Promotion Optimization image

          Chapter 4

          Artificial Intelligence in Trade Promotion Optimization

          What An Ai Powered Promotion Analysis Looks Like image

          Chapter 5

          What an AI-Powered Promotion Analysis Looks Like

          Case Study image

          Chapter 6

          Case-study

          About Compass image

          Chapter 7

          About Compass

          Chapter 1

          What is Trade Promotion Optimization

          This chapter is all about the basics and the current state of CPG trade promotions. It’ll help us get the definitions right before we delve into the actual topic.

          Trade Promotion Optimization

          The Current State of Trade Promotions

          Underline Cpg Trade Promotions

          of CPG trade promotion spending doesn’t drive the desired results

          - Nielsen Holdings

          Trade Promotions

          of the money was lost by most of the manufacturers who invest in trade promotions

          - Booz Allen Hamilton

          Fmcg Trade Promotions

          of trade promotions globally don't break even

          - Nielsen Holdings

          Tpo

          improvement on trade promotion ROI will improve the top line by 10% and operating margins by 3-5%

          - Economic Times Retail

          Even though the trade promotions spend take up a lion’s share of the organizational revenue, traditionally manufacturers have always struggled in optimizing their promotion mix for achieving the maximum bang for the buck. CPG companies typically take a two-step approach to implementing trade promotions – Trade Promotion Optimization and Trade Promotion Management (TPM). Let’s start by establishing the core definitions of both and how they are different from each other.

          Trade Promotion Optimization (TPO): TPO is the process of continuously improving the effectiveness of trade promotion strategies by optimizing them based on your business goals and current supply and promotion constraints. The key objective of TPO is to maximize the value every dollar invested in trade promotions. It follows the famous motto of “Build, Measure, Learn and Repeat”.

          The software which support and enable this entire process is Trade Promotion Optimization Software. These solutions are equipped with a range of predictive modelling, analytics and data harmonization capabilities.

          Trade Promotion Management (TPM): TPM focuses more on the internal execution and operational part of trade promotions. This can include defining new promotions, allocating budgets at various stages for different departments, retail activity management, tracking promotions and managing funds, authorizing payments etc.

          TPM systems lack or have limited forecasting and promotion effectiveness analysis capabilities - things that are critical to profitably optimizing your trade spend
          Chapter 2

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths and Challenges

          Even though many companies recognize the importance of powerful TPO procedure, organizational and technological challenges often limit teams from implementing an effective TPO. In this chapter we will debunk some popular TPO myths and discuss common challenges.

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths and Challenges images

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths

          Underline

          Myth #1 We already have a TPM system in place. We won’t need an additional TPO system

          This is the most common excuse we hear when we talk to CPG companies about their trade promotion challenges. TPM systems are needed to “manage” promotions i.e you can use them to define promotions, track spending or schedule invoices to retailers or any other operational/transactional activities. However, the capabilities of these systems are limited to just planning and execution.

          A majority of TPM solutions can’t integrate data from key influential sources like POS, digital media, weather etc.he post-event analysis and what-if scenario building capabilities are also very limited in most TPM software.

          Always build the trade promotion optimization (TPO) into your trade promotion management approach - Gartner

          Companies should look at choosing a TPO solution which can seamlessly integrate into their existing TPM system. This enables both systems to work in tandem with each other and centralize all your trade promotion activities.

          Read More: 6 Best Practices For Moving From TPM to TPO

          Myth #2 We will face adoption issues from our sales teams

          Any reliable TPO solution should be extremely user-friendly. Advanced visualizations and seamless navigation flows are some key elements to look for while choosing a TPO solution and have elements which will help with better adoption by users.

          In addition, a TPO solution should  automate post-event analysis and data-entry. Without automation, field-sales teams need to manually enter data which is not only unproductive but also prone to human-error. Obtaining  information for better decision making is a huge challenge.

          Integrating AI chatbots with the TPO solution is one another effective way to increase adoption among field-sales personnel. Chatbots simplify the way you interact with data and eliminate the need to switch windows or drill dashboards.

          Read More: 5 Amazing Business Benefits of Data Visualization

          Myth #3 Deploying a new TPO system is both cost and time intensive

          Unlike your typical TPM systems which need a considerable amount of time to go live, TPO systems can be deployed within a few weeks. And while it’s true that these systems can’t really be termed “cost-friendly” but companies need to think about the ROI delivered by these systems.

          Today a mere 15% improvement on Trade Promotion ROI will improve the top line by 10% and operating margins by 3-5%. If you are in the CPG business, you probably must be well aware of the increased competition from local brands in the last decade. And this is most likely to increase further in the coming years.

          In such a scenario, you no longer can afford taking critical business decisions based on gut or partial intelligence or past experiences.

          Success in the CPG industry is largely based on decisions – decisions which are accurate and taken at a lightening speed. While decision-making does depend on several factors, it’s highly important to leverage emerging technologies like TPO solutions which will improve and simplify it.   

          Information is the oil of the 21st century and analysis is the combustion engine - Gartner

          Read More: 5 Trade Promotion Optimization Myths You Need To Stop Believing

          Trade Promotion Optimization Challenges

          Underline

          Challenge # 1 Data Availability

          There are numerous types of data which needs to be considered before devising or optimizing trade promotion strategies. These could include POS data or Syndicated data from data brokers or past promotion data etc. However most companies spend heavily and depend solely on syndicated data for taking decisions.

          Read More: Data Brokers – How Can Consumer Goods Companies Maximize ROI

          While this type of data is important to capture, there are numerous other influential data types which need to be harnessed to increase data accuracy and get a big picture view of reality. Another popular challenge is siloed data. Your POS data remains at one place, syndicated data in another, social media data at some other place. This limits the efficiency and productiveness of decision-makers as they can’t process and analyze data effortlessly.

          Challenge #2 Sole reliance on spreadsheets for data consumption

          Most decision-makers in the CPG business still are reliant on some custom-built spreadsheets for data consumption. Even though many business users are accustomed to using Excel, the lack of flexibility of these sheets decreases the speed and accuracy of decision-making.

          Especially as the amount of data to be processed increases, decision-makers have to spend more time analyzing data and less time gaining insights from it. Also, manual data entry into spreadsheets is very tedious for field-sales teams and prone to human errors.

          Challenge #3 High dependency on IT or MIS teams

          This is another common challenge which disables TPO teams from leveraging data for decision-making. Business teams usually have to depend on highly-skilled crew like IT or MIS personnel or Data Scientists to get new report formats or update the existing ones with the latest data. This is a complicated process and hard to incorporate in the daily work flows of a decision-maker.

          Read More: The 5 major benefits of self-service BI

          Know More About Our Self-Service BI Services

          Challenge #4 Inaccurate post promotion analysis

          Due to the above challenges and various other organization-specific problems, TPO teams cannot powerfully measure the effectiveness of trade promotions and clearly identify low and high yield promotions. Thereby budget and resource allocation cannot be done effectively.

          Challenge #5 Lack of tools with powerful analytical capabilities

          Most companies depend on their typical corporate systems like TPM or ERP systems for trade spend analysis. However, trade promotion planning, measurement and optimization require tools with strong analytical capabilities. A majority of existing TPM systems only offer effective control mechanisms.

          Challenge #6 Focus on incorrect metrics

          Even though there is a quick realization that profitability carries more weight than volume, business teams – from field sales to marketing are still focusing on volume. But volume and profitable volume are two entirely different things. Focus on achieving profit should be embedded within every department of the organization.

          Read More: Trade Promotion Optimization: Challanges and How AI Can Help

          Chapter 3

          Must-have capabilities in a Trade Promotion Optimization solution

          The TPO software market is huge and there are numerous vendors who promise a wide-range of features. In this chapter, we’ll explore some important capabilities you must look for while evaluating solutions.

          Must-have capabilities in a Trade Promotion Optimization solution image

          It’s imperative to understand the different steps involved in trade promotion optimization and important capabilities required to effectively execute each step.

          6 key steps of trade promotion optimization

          Underline Data Integration image

          Data integration and harmonization

          Active sales image

          Promotion effectiveness measurement and analysis

          Sales Forcasting image

          Sales
          forecasting

          Promotion Optimization image

          Promotion optimization

          Publishing To Tpm Solution image

          Publishing to TPM solution

          Bussiness Adoption image

          Business Adoption

          1. Data integration and harmonization

          In most CPG companies data is stored in disparate silos, disabling decision-makers to have holistic view of reality. An effective TPO solution should be able to bring together high-quality real-time data from different internal and external sources with no errors. Ideally the solution should also have data cleansing capability to ensure consistent and accurate data.

          To ensure data accuracy, the solution should also be fed with data from multiple influential data sources and market touch points. This combined raw data acts as a strong foundation on which a powerful analysis can be run to glean insights.

          Important data sources your TPO solution should capture

          Underline Different types of data compass captures images

          1. Internal data

          • Market research: Market, consumer and competitor information from analysts.
          • Past promotions: Information on different trade promotions run for different products and their effectiveness.
          • Primary sales: Sales from the manufacturer to distributor/retailer
          • Secondary sales: Sales from the distributor/ retailer to the end customer.
          • Marketing campaigns: Ongoing and future marketing activities that can impact your trade promotion ROI.
          • Point of Sales: The basket of items which a customer buys at a retail outlet
          Read More: POS Data Analysis – How Can Retailers and Consumer Goods Companies Make the Most of it Trade Promotion Optimization: Challanges and How AI Can Help
          Check out our POS Analytics Solutions

          2. External data

          • Syndicated data: Data from Nielsen, IRI, SPINS and other data brokers etc.
          • Weather: Consumer behaviours change based on seasons or environmental factors like flu, pollen etc. and this can impact your sales or trade promotions. The TPO solution should be integrated with past, future and current weather data.

          Read More: How Weather Impacts Retail Sales & How Big Data Analytics Can Help

          Check Out Our Weather Analytics Solution
          • Events: Major events like a famous musician’s performance or a sporting event can alter consumers’ behaviour towards certain type of products (ex: A football event can trigger more sales for a beverage)
          • Digital Media: 
          • 58% of survey respondents rate their capabilities at the intersection of digital and trade promotion as “lagging" Promotion Optimization Institute
          • As digital marketing continue to increase in the consumer goods business, it is essential to learn what consumers are searching for, tweeting about, how they are mentioning your and competitor brand or responding to particular Facebook or Instagram campaign and so on. However this type of data is largely unstructured and generated real-time.

            Traditional TPO solutions miss this vital information. If you are evaluating vendors, ensure their solution captures and harnesses digital data. An ideal TPO solution needs to provide a comprehensive and single window view of all types of data and reports.

          Read More: Our Data Integration Services

          2. Promotion effectiveness measurement and analysis

          The current obstacle to more meaningful post-event analytics is that it largely lacks automation - Promotion Optimization Institute

          Automate Post-Event Analysis

          Post-promotion/event analysis is a key feature of any TPO solution. Lack of automation results in manual compiling of data and over burdening of your field sales teams.

          In a POI research, it is found that only 39% of CG companies have some level of automation in their TPO solution. Automation allows you to see the performance of as many promotions as you want and as often as you want. It also relieves burden on your field teams and eliminates human-error which can occur due to manual data-entry.

          In-depth Insights

          Promotion effectiveness dashboard image

          The solution should display key metrics like growth, sales uplift, ROI, volume, profitability for every promotion and offer the flexibility to view at brand, location, retailer levels.

          Check Out Our Post Promotion Analytics Solutions

          3. Promotion forecasting and planning

          Post-promotion/event analysis is a key feature of any TPO solution. Lack of automation results in manual compiling of data and over burdening of your field sales teams.

          In a POI research, it is found that only 39% of CG companies have some level of automation in their TPO solution. Automation allows you to see the performance of as many promotions as you want and as often as you want. It also relieves burden on your field teams and eliminates human-error which can occur due to manual data-entry.

          4. Promotion optimization

          The solution should be able to optimize trade spend based on the given promotion combinations forecasted and recommend which promotions should be run based on

          a.The constraints defined. eg: budget for a region.

          b.The objectives which need to be achieved i.e either to increase volume or gain market share or increase revenue or increase profit.

          The solution should allow the planner to simulate various promotion scenarios and pick the best scenario based on the sales uplift and profit predicted for various scenarios.

          5. Publishing to TPM solution

          The solution should seamlessly integrate into your existing TPM and ERP systems and allow you to schedule and publish plans to your sales teams.

          6 Business Adoption

          TPO initiatives usually fail because of the required change management. And Business users face challenges with learning to use the solution and getting access to information and data to make better decisions. As a result they go back to the old way of using  custom-built excel sheets to make their decisions . This challenge can be overcome by embedding AI chatbots into the TPO solution.

          Chapter 4

          Artificial Intelligence in Trade Promotion Optimization

          According to Gartner, AI technologies will be in almost every software product by 2020. And TPO systems are no different. Modern trade promotion optimization solutions are leveraging AI to harness data and produce actionable intelligence.

          Artificial Intelligence in Trade Promotion Optimization image

          Traditional analytics like descriptive and diagnostic analytics have always been a part of TPO solutions. While these analytics technologies do provide some key insights, most of them are non-actionable.

          Consumer Goods and Retail businesses produce massive amounts of data every day and an powerful harnessing of this humongous data requires advanced technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

          Advanced analytics like predictive and prescriptive analytics are powered with AI and machine learning and add the much needed “intelligence” part to the TPO software. Unlike traditional analytics which provide shallow insights, Advanced analytics turn data into meaningful insights – insights which are actionable and enable you to take a decision quickly and more accurately.

          Traditional Analytics

          • What happened
          • How Many
          • How Often etc.
          • Why is this happening ?

          Predictive and Prescriptive Analytics

          • What happened
          • How Many
          • How often
          • Why is this happening?
          • What will happen in the future and what should i do about it?
          • Which promotions are delivering the highest ROI and why?
          • What is the lost sales percentage?
          • What is the right promotion mix strategy for the upcoming quarter?
          • How can I maximize my trade promotion ROI?
          • What is my expected ROI if I price Brand A 3 USD more than Brand B for the next 3 months?
          • What are my predicted sales if I keep Brand A at base price for the next 6 months and promote Brand B for a BOGO for the next 1 month?
          • What is the retailer performance in a location for a specific time period and for a specific product?

          Build What-if scenario scenarios

          Advanced analytics allow you to build different virtual promotional scenarios and gives the estimated ROI in each scenario. This estimated ROI is provided based on the harnessing of the data fed to the software. You can build different scenarios by changing different parameters like brand, price, promotion, location, duration etc. and learn the estimated ROI and sales uplift before actually running the promotion.

          Examples

          1. What is my estimated ROI if I run a BOGO for Brand A for 2 months at City B for Price C?
          2. What will be my sales uplift if I offer half price for Brand X and keep Brand Y at base price for the next 1 month?

          Identify trends and patterns in the data

          Advanced analytics leverage machine learning to capture trends in your past promotions and their impact which you might not be aware of. This can include alerting you if there is a dip in sales or if there is an increase in promotion ROI etc. This data discovery helps you take better decisions and run promotions that matter.

          Leverage unstructured data

          Unstructured content already accounts for a staggering 90 percent of all digital data, much of which is locked away across a variety of different data stores, in different locations and in varying formats - IDC

          Data from crucial data sources like digital and social media, TRP, events, POS are largely unstructured and cannot be harnessed by traditional analytics. Big data and AI technologies such as Machine Learning (ML) harness and convert this raw, unstructured data into meaningful insights.

          Get fact-based recommendations and forecasts

          Based on the data fed, advanced analytics provide recommendations and tell you what can be the next best step. You can get crisp prescriptions like “Run promotion A for location B for 1 month to get sales uplift on Y percent”, allowing you to glean insights from the analysis instead of you doing the tedious data analysis process and deciding by yourself.

          Read More: A Quick Guide To Choosing a Trade Promotion Optimization Software

          Chapter 5

          What an AI-Powered Promotion Analysis Looks Like

          Check out the different dashboards of our AI enabled TPO solution - Compass

          AI-Powered Promotion Analysis image

          Measure Trade Promotion Effectiveness

          Cpg promotion effectiveness image

          Compare sales with various parameters

          Compass promotion plan image

          Actual sales vs Predicted
          Sales

          predicted chart image

          Get a 360-degree view on impact of sales

          sales portal dashboard images
          Chapter 6

          Case study

          Acuvate reduces trade promotion spend for a transnational Consumer Goods company by 100k USD

          Case-study images

          About the Company

          Underline

          It is a transnational consumer goods company co-headquartered in Netherlands and London, United Kingdom.

          Its products include several food and beverage, cleaning agents and personal care products. It is the world's largest consumer goods company (measured by 2012 revenue) and the world's largest producer of food spreads.

          It is Europe’s 7th-most valuable company and one of the oldest multinational companies with products across 190 countries.

          1. Business Scenario

          • The Client had a challenge in calculating and monitoring the the Sales Uplift for various promotions being run in the emerging markets.

            The sales and revenue management teams had a promotion calendar which is defined in Excel sheets. The company purchased only the sales and market share data from Nielsen Holdings and don’t have the crucial data of past promotions and pricing.

            This impacted the accuracy in decision-making and teams were unable to analyze

            1. The impact and effectiveness of various promotions on different products.
            2. The sales uplift created by each promotion.

            As a result identifying the right promotion for the right scenario became a challenge.

          2. Solution

          • Acuvate used its domain and technology expertise to meet the client’s requirement. The solution was used for two markets and one category.

            The solution included

            • Extracting data from spreadsheets and integrating the same into a Data Mart
            • Calculating the base sales by comparing periods where Promotions were not present for an SKU
            • Calculating the Sales Uplift and growth for each Promotion

            This solution allowed the sales and revenue management teams to identify

            • Which promotions were creating an uplift and for which specific SKUs.
            • Which SKUs were negatively impacted by the promotions run.

          3. Benefits and Features

          • Using the solution, users were able to

                 a) Identify the Sales Uplift vs Target for each promotion.

                b) Increase sales by getting actionable recommendations on the best promotions to be run and understanding which ones work.

                c) Set alerts if the Sales uplift goes below a specific number.

                d) View dashboards on mobile and ask natural language questions as well to get the needed data.

          ROI

          Underline Reduced image

          Reduced Trade Promotions spend by 100K USD

          Reduced In Manual image

          Reduced In Manual effort by 500 person hours

          Increased Revenue image

          Increased
          revenue

          Faster Decisions image

          Faster decisions through actionable recommendations and analysis

          Chapter 7

          About Compass

          Retail Business Intelligence Solution banner image

          Explore Acuvate’s Trade Promotion Optimization Software, Compass.

          Compass is Acuvate’s Trade Promotion Optimization software which leverages Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and Advanced Analytics. It is created on the primary motto of making data work to get maximum bang for the buck for your trade promotions. Measure, Forecast, Analyze, Optimize and Repeat.

          Key Capability image

          The different features of Compass

          Underline

          High-Quality Data Lake

          1. Capture data from multiple
            external and internal
            sources including digital
            media, weather, events,
            POS, competitor intelligence
            and beyond.
          2. Cleanse the data to remove
            duplicates and also
            effectively organize the
            Same.
          3. Convert Unstructured data
            to structured.

          AI & Machine Learning

          1. Run promotions with an intelligent and convenient analysis of data.
          2. Detect key insights and anomalies in promotional data
          3. Unlike traditional analytics which provides shallow insights, predictive and prescriptive analytics forecast and prescribes the right actions to maximize the ROI of your promotions.
          4. Crucial what-if scenarios will be addressed as well.

          AI Bots & Advanced Visualizations

          1. Simplify the way you consume data from the TPO software with chatbots
          2. See data in the most convenient and visually-rich formats with advanced visualizations

          Solution Benefits & Features

          1. Create customizable reports and dashboards without depending on skilled crew
          2. Easy to use for both power and non-power users

          How Compass Works?

          Underline Fmcg analysis

          Related Articles

          Underline

          Request a Demo

          Underline
      • Post Promotions Analytics
        • Trade Promotion Optimization Software: Everything You Must Know

          Request For Demo Learn more Trade Promotion Optimization Softwares Everything Know Banner Image

          Our Customers Around The World

          Underline Clientsv3 1
          What Is Trade Promotion Optimization image

          Chapter 1

          What is Trade Promotion Optimization

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths And Challenges image

          Chapter 2

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths and Challenges

          Must Have Capabilities In A Trade Promotion Optimization Solution image

          Chapter 3

          Must-have capabilities in a TPO solution

          Artificial Intelligence In Trade Promotion Optimization image

          Chapter 4

          Artificial Intelligence in Trade Promotion Optimization

          What An Ai Powered Promotion Analysis Looks Like image

          Chapter 5

          What an AI-Powered Promotion Analysis Looks Like

          Case Study image

          Chapter 6

          Case-study

          About Compass image

          Chapter 7

          About Compass

          Chapter 1

          What is Trade Promotion Optimization

          This chapter is all about the basics and the current state of CPG trade promotions. It’ll help us get the definitions right before we delve into the actual topic.

          Trade Promotion Optimization

          The Current State of Trade Promotions

          Underline Cpg Trade Promotions

          of CPG trade promotion spending doesn’t drive the desired results

          - Nielsen Holdings

          Trade Promotions

          of the money was lost by most of the manufacturers who invest in trade promotions

          - Booz Allen Hamilton

          Fmcg Trade Promotions

          of trade promotions globally don't break even

          - Nielsen Holdings

          Tpo

          improvement on trade promotion ROI will improve the top line by 10% and operating margins by 3-5%

          - Economic Times Retail

          Even though the trade promotions spend take up a lion’s share of the organizational revenue, traditionally manufacturers have always struggled in optimizing their promotion mix for achieving the maximum bang for the buck. CPG companies typically take a two-step approach to implementing trade promotions – Trade Promotion Optimization and Trade Promotion Management (TPM). Let’s start by establishing the core definitions of both and how they are different from each other.

          Trade Promotion Optimization (TPO): TPO is the process of continuously improving the effectiveness of trade promotion strategies by optimizing them based on your business goals and current supply and promotion constraints. The key objective of TPO is to maximize the value every dollar invested in trade promotions. It follows the famous motto of “Build, Measure, Learn and Repeat”.

          The software which support and enable this entire process is Trade Promotion Optimization Software. These solutions are equipped with a range of predictive modelling, analytics and data harmonization capabilities.

          Trade Promotion Management (TPM): TPM focuses more on the internal execution and operational part of trade promotions. This can include defining new promotions, allocating budgets at various stages for different departments, retail activity management, tracking promotions and managing funds, authorizing payments etc.

          TPM systems lack or have limited forecasting and promotion effectiveness analysis capabilities - things that are critical to profitably optimizing your trade spend
          Chapter 2

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths and Challenges

          Even though many companies recognize the importance of powerful TPO procedure, organizational and technological challenges often limit teams from implementing an effective TPO. In this chapter we will debunk some popular TPO myths and discuss common challenges.

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths and Challenges images

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths

          Underline

          Myth #1 We already have a TPM system in place. We won’t need an additional TPO system

          This is the most common excuse we hear when we talk to CPG companies about their trade promotion challenges. TPM systems are needed to “manage” promotions i.e you can use them to define promotions, track spending or schedule invoices to retailers or any other operational/transactional activities. However, the capabilities of these systems are limited to just planning and execution.

          A majority of TPM solutions can’t integrate data from key influential sources like POS, digital media, weather etc.he post-event analysis and what-if scenario building capabilities are also very limited in most TPM software.

          Always build the trade promotion optimization (TPO) into your trade promotion management approach - Gartner

          Companies should look at choosing a TPO solution which can seamlessly integrate into their existing TPM system. This enables both systems to work in tandem with each other and centralize all your trade promotion activities.

          Read More: 6 Best Practices For Moving From TPM to TPO

          Myth #2 We will face adoption issues from our sales teams

          Any reliable TPO solution should be extremely user-friendly. Advanced visualizations and seamless navigation flows are some key elements to look for while choosing a TPO solution and have elements which will help with better adoption by users.

          In addition, a TPO solution should  automate post-event analysis and data-entry. Without automation, field-sales teams need to manually enter data which is not only unproductive but also prone to human-error. Obtaining  information for better decision making is a huge challenge.

          Integrating AI chatbots with the TPO solution is one another effective way to increase adoption among field-sales personnel. Chatbots simplify the way you interact with data and eliminate the need to switch windows or drill dashboards.

          Read More: 5 Amazing Business Benefits of Data Visualization

          Myth #3 Deploying a new TPO system is both cost and time intensive

          Unlike your typical TPM systems which need a considerable amount of time to go live, TPO systems can be deployed within a few weeks. And while it’s true that these systems can’t really be termed “cost-friendly” but companies need to think about the ROI delivered by these systems.

          Today a mere 15% improvement on Trade Promotion ROI will improve the top line by 10% and operating margins by 3-5%. If you are in the CPG business, you probably must be well aware of the increased competition from local brands in the last decade. And this is most likely to increase further in the coming years.

          In such a scenario, you no longer can afford taking critical business decisions based on gut or partial intelligence or past experiences.

          Success in the CPG industry is largely based on decisions – decisions which are accurate and taken at a lightening speed. While decision-making does depend on several factors, it’s highly important to leverage emerging technologies like TPO solutions which will improve and simplify it.   

          Information is the oil of the 21st century and analysis is the combustion engine - Gartner

          Read More: 5 Trade Promotion Optimization Myths You Need To Stop Believing

          Trade Promotion Optimization Challenges

          Underline

          Challenge # 1 Data Availability

          There are numerous types of data which needs to be considered before devising or optimizing trade promotion strategies. These could include POS data or Syndicated data from data brokers or past promotion data etc. However most companies spend heavily and depend solely on syndicated data for taking decisions.

          Read More: Data Brokers – How Can Consumer Goods Companies Maximize ROI

          While this type of data is important to capture, there are numerous other influential data types which need to be harnessed to increase data accuracy and get a big picture view of reality. Another popular challenge is siloed data. Your POS data remains at one place, syndicated data in another, social media data at some other place. This limits the efficiency and productiveness of decision-makers as they can’t process and analyze data effortlessly.

          Challenge #2 Sole reliance on spreadsheets for data consumption

          Most decision-makers in the CPG business still are reliant on some custom-built spreadsheets for data consumption. Even though many business users are accustomed to using Excel, the lack of flexibility of these sheets decreases the speed and accuracy of decision-making.

          Especially as the amount of data to be processed increases, decision-makers have to spend more time analyzing data and less time gaining insights from it. Also, manual data entry into spreadsheets is very tedious for field-sales teams and prone to human errors.

          Challenge #3 High dependency on IT or MIS teams

          This is another common challenge which disables TPO teams from leveraging data for decision-making. Business teams usually have to depend on highly-skilled crew like IT or MIS personnel or Data Scientists to get new report formats or update the existing ones with the latest data. This is a complicated process and hard to incorporate in the daily work flows of a decision-maker.

          Read More: The 5 major benefits of self-service BI

          Know More About Our Self-Service BI Services

          Challenge #4 Inaccurate post promotion analysis

          Due to the above challenges and various other organization-specific problems, TPO teams cannot powerfully measure the effectiveness of trade promotions and clearly identify low and high yield promotions. Thereby budget and resource allocation cannot be done effectively.

          Challenge #5 Lack of tools with powerful analytical capabilities

          Most companies depend on their typical corporate systems like TPM or ERP systems for trade spend analysis. However, trade promotion planning, measurement and optimization require tools with strong analytical capabilities. A majority of existing TPM systems only offer effective control mechanisms.

          Challenge #6 Focus on incorrect metrics

          Even though there is a quick realization that profitability carries more weight than volume, business teams – from field sales to marketing are still focusing on volume. But volume and profitable volume are two entirely different things. Focus on achieving profit should be embedded within every department of the organization.

          Read More: Trade Promotion Optimization: Challanges and How AI Can Help

          Chapter 3

          Must-have capabilities in a Trade Promotion Optimization solution

          The TPO software market is huge and there are numerous vendors who promise a wide-range of features. In this chapter, we’ll explore some important capabilities you must look for while evaluating solutions.

          Must-have capabilities in a Trade Promotion Optimization solution image

          It’s imperative to understand the different steps involved in trade promotion optimization and important capabilities required to effectively execute each step.

          6 key steps of trade promotion optimization

          Underline Data Integration image

          Data integration and harmonization

          Active sales image

          Promotion effectiveness measurement and analysis

          Sales Forcasting image

          Sales
          forecasting

          Promotion Optimization image

          Promotion optimization

          Publishing To Tpm Solution image

          Publishing to TPM solution

          Bussiness Adoption image

          Business Adoption

          1. Data integration and harmonization

          In most CPG companies data is stored in disparate silos, disabling decision-makers to have holistic view of reality. An effective TPO solution should be able to bring together high-quality real-time data from different internal and external sources with no errors. Ideally the solution should also have data cleansing capability to ensure consistent and accurate data.

          To ensure data accuracy, the solution should also be fed with data from multiple influential data sources and market touch points. This combined raw data acts as a strong foundation on which a powerful analysis can be run to glean insights.

          Important data sources your TPO solution should capture

          Underline Different types of data compass captures images

          1. Internal data

          • Market research: Market, consumer and competitor information from analysts.
          • Past promotions: Information on different trade promotions run for different products and their effectiveness.
          • Primary sales: Sales from the manufacturer to distributor/retailer
          • Secondary sales: Sales from the distributor/ retailer to the end customer.
          • Marketing campaigns: Ongoing and future marketing activities that can impact your trade promotion ROI.
          • Point of Sales: The basket of items which a customer buys at a retail outlet
          Read More: POS Data Analysis – How Can Retailers and Consumer Goods Companies Make the Most of it Trade Promotion Optimization: Challanges and How AI Can Help
          Check out our POS Analytics Solutions

          2. External data

          • Syndicated data: Data from Nielsen, IRI, SPINS and other data brokers etc.
          • Weather: Consumer behaviours change based on seasons or environmental factors like flu, pollen etc. and this can impact your sales or trade promotions. The TPO solution should be integrated with past, future and current weather data.

          Read More: How Weather Impacts Retail Sales & How Big Data Analytics Can Help

          Check Out Our Weather Analytics Solution
          • Events: Major events like a famous musician’s performance or a sporting event can alter consumers’ behaviour towards certain type of products (ex: A football event can trigger more sales for a beverage)
          • Digital Media: 
          • 58% of survey respondents rate their capabilities at the intersection of digital and trade promotion as “lagging" Promotion Optimization Institute
          • As digital marketing continue to increase in the consumer goods business, it is essential to learn what consumers are searching for, tweeting about, how they are mentioning your and competitor brand or responding to particular Facebook or Instagram campaign and so on. However this type of data is largely unstructured and generated real-time.

            Traditional TPO solutions miss this vital information. If you are evaluating vendors, ensure their solution captures and harnesses digital data. An ideal TPO solution needs to provide a comprehensive and single window view of all types of data and reports.

          Read More: Our Data Integration Services

          2. Promotion effectiveness measurement and analysis

          The current obstacle to more meaningful post-event analytics is that it largely lacks automation - Promotion Optimization Institute

          Automate Post-Event Analysis

          Post-promotion/event analysis is a key feature of any TPO solution. Lack of automation results in manual compiling of data and over burdening of your field sales teams.

          In a POI research, it is found that only 39% of CG companies have some level of automation in their TPO solution. Automation allows you to see the performance of as many promotions as you want and as often as you want. It also relieves burden on your field teams and eliminates human-error which can occur due to manual data-entry.

          In-depth Insights

          Promotion effectiveness dashboard image

          The solution should display key metrics like growth, sales uplift, ROI, volume, profitability for every promotion and offer the flexibility to view at brand, location, retailer levels.

          Check Out Our Post Promotion Analytics Solutions

          3. Promotion forecasting and planning

          Post-promotion/event analysis is a key feature of any TPO solution. Lack of automation results in manual compiling of data and over burdening of your field sales teams.

          In a POI research, it is found that only 39% of CG companies have some level of automation in their TPO solution. Automation allows you to see the performance of as many promotions as you want and as often as you want. It also relieves burden on your field teams and eliminates human-error which can occur due to manual data-entry.

          4. Promotion optimization

          The solution should be able to optimize trade spend based on the given promotion combinations forecasted and recommend which promotions should be run based on

          a.The constraints defined. eg: budget for a region.

          b.The objectives which need to be achieved i.e either to increase volume or gain market share or increase revenue or increase profit.

          The solution should allow the planner to simulate various promotion scenarios and pick the best scenario based on the sales uplift and profit predicted for various scenarios.

          5. Publishing to TPM solution

          The solution should seamlessly integrate into your existing TPM and ERP systems and allow you to schedule and publish plans to your sales teams.

          6 Business Adoption

          TPO initiatives usually fail because of the required change management. And Business users face challenges with learning to use the solution and getting access to information and data to make better decisions. As a result they go back to the old way of using  custom-built excel sheets to make their decisions . This challenge can be overcome by embedding AI chatbots into the TPO solution.

          Chapter 4

          Artificial Intelligence in Trade Promotion Optimization

          According to Gartner, AI technologies will be in almost every software product by 2020. And TPO systems are no different. Modern trade promotion optimization solutions are leveraging AI to harness data and produce actionable intelligence.

          Artificial Intelligence in Trade Promotion Optimization image

          Traditional analytics like descriptive and diagnostic analytics have always been a part of TPO solutions. While these analytics technologies do provide some key insights, most of them are non-actionable.

          Consumer Goods and Retail businesses produce massive amounts of data every day and an powerful harnessing of this humongous data requires advanced technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

          Advanced analytics like predictive and prescriptive analytics are powered with AI and machine learning and add the much needed “intelligence” part to the TPO software. Unlike traditional analytics which provide shallow insights, Advanced analytics turn data into meaningful insights – insights which are actionable and enable you to take a decision quickly and more accurately.

          Traditional Analytics

          • What happened
          • How Many
          • How Often etc.
          • Why is this happening ?

          Predictive and Prescriptive Analytics

          • What happened
          • How Many
          • How often
          • Why is this happening?
          • What will happen in the future and what should i do about it?
          • Which promotions are delivering the highest ROI and why?
          • What is the lost sales percentage?
          • What is the right promotion mix strategy for the upcoming quarter?
          • How can I maximize my trade promotion ROI?
          • What is my expected ROI if I price Brand A 3 USD more than Brand B for the next 3 months?
          • What are my predicted sales if I keep Brand A at base price for the next 6 months and promote Brand B for a BOGO for the next 1 month?
          • What is the retailer performance in a location for a specific time period and for a specific product?

          Build What-if scenario scenarios

          Advanced analytics allow you to build different virtual promotional scenarios and gives the estimated ROI in each scenario. This estimated ROI is provided based on the harnessing of the data fed to the software. You can build different scenarios by changing different parameters like brand, price, promotion, location, duration etc. and learn the estimated ROI and sales uplift before actually running the promotion.

          Examples

          1. What is my estimated ROI if I run a BOGO for Brand A for 2 months at City B for Price C?
          2. What will be my sales uplift if I offer half price for Brand X and keep Brand Y at base price for the next 1 month?

          Identify trends and patterns in the data

          Advanced analytics leverage machine learning to capture trends in your past promotions and their impact which you might not be aware of. This can include alerting you if there is a dip in sales or if there is an increase in promotion ROI etc. This data discovery helps you take better decisions and run promotions that matter.

          Leverage unstructured data

          Unstructured content already accounts for a staggering 90 percent of all digital data, much of which is locked away across a variety of different data stores, in different locations and in varying formats - IDC

          Data from crucial data sources like digital and social media, TRP, events, POS are largely unstructured and cannot be harnessed by traditional analytics. Big data and AI technologies such as Machine Learning (ML) harness and convert this raw, unstructured data into meaningful insights.

          Get fact-based recommendations and forecasts

          Based on the data fed, advanced analytics provide recommendations and tell you what can be the next best step. You can get crisp prescriptions like “Run promotion A for location B for 1 month to get sales uplift on Y percent”, allowing you to glean insights from the analysis instead of you doing the tedious data analysis process and deciding by yourself.

          Read More: A Quick Guide To Choosing a Trade Promotion Optimization Software

          Chapter 5

          What an AI-Powered Promotion Analysis Looks Like

          Check out the different dashboards of our AI enabled TPO solution - Compass

          AI-Powered Promotion Analysis image

          Measure Trade Promotion Effectiveness

          Cpg promotion effectiveness image

          Compare sales with various parameters

          Compass promotion plan image

          Actual sales vs Predicted
          Sales

          predicted chart image

          Get a 360-degree view on impact of sales

          sales portal dashboard images
          Chapter 6

          Case study

          Acuvate reduces trade promotion spend for a transnational Consumer Goods company by 100k USD

          Case-study images

          About the Company

          Underline

          It is a transnational consumer goods company co-headquartered in Netherlands and London, United Kingdom.

          Its products include several food and beverage, cleaning agents and personal care products. It is the world's largest consumer goods company (measured by 2012 revenue) and the world's largest producer of food spreads.

          It is Europe’s 7th-most valuable company and one of the oldest multinational companies with products across 190 countries.

          1. Business Scenario

          • The Client had a challenge in calculating and monitoring the the Sales Uplift for various promotions being run in the emerging markets.

            The sales and revenue management teams had a promotion calendar which is defined in Excel sheets. The company purchased only the sales and market share data from Nielsen Holdings and don’t have the crucial data of past promotions and pricing.

            This impacted the accuracy in decision-making and teams were unable to analyze

            1. The impact and effectiveness of various promotions on different products.
            2. The sales uplift created by each promotion.

            As a result identifying the right promotion for the right scenario became a challenge.

          2. Solution

          • Acuvate used its domain and technology expertise to meet the client’s requirement. The solution was used for two markets and one category.

            The solution included

            • Extracting data from spreadsheets and integrating the same into a Data Mart
            • Calculating the base sales by comparing periods where Promotions were not present for an SKU
            • Calculating the Sales Uplift and growth for each Promotion

            This solution allowed the sales and revenue management teams to identify

            • Which promotions were creating an uplift and for which specific SKUs.
            • Which SKUs were negatively impacted by the promotions run.

          3. Benefits and Features

          • Using the solution, users were able to

                 a) Identify the Sales Uplift vs Target for each promotion.

                b) Increase sales by getting actionable recommendations on the best promotions to be run and understanding which ones work.

                c) Set alerts if the Sales uplift goes below a specific number.

                d) View dashboards on mobile and ask natural language questions as well to get the needed data.

          ROI

          Underline Reduced image

          Reduced Trade Promotions spend by 100K USD

          Reduced In Manual image

          Reduced In Manual effort by 500 person hours

          Increased Revenue image

          Increased
          revenue

          Faster Decisions image

          Faster decisions through actionable recommendations and analysis

          Chapter 7

          About Compass

          Retail Business Intelligence Solution banner image

          Explore Acuvate’s Trade Promotion Optimization Software, Compass.

          Compass is Acuvate’s Trade Promotion Optimization software which leverages Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and Advanced Analytics. It is created on the primary motto of making data work to get maximum bang for the buck for your trade promotions. Measure, Forecast, Analyze, Optimize and Repeat.

          Key Capability image

          The different features of Compass

          Underline

          High-Quality Data Lake

          1. Capture data from multiple
            external and internal
            sources including digital
            media, weather, events,
            POS, competitor intelligence
            and beyond.
          2. Cleanse the data to remove
            duplicates and also
            effectively organize the
            Same.
          3. Convert Unstructured data
            to structured.

          AI & Machine Learning

          1. Run promotions with an intelligent and convenient analysis of data.
          2. Detect key insights and anomalies in promotional data
          3. Unlike traditional analytics which provides shallow insights, predictive and prescriptive analytics forecast and prescribes the right actions to maximize the ROI of your promotions.
          4. Crucial what-if scenarios will be addressed as well.

          AI Bots & Advanced Visualizations

          1. Simplify the way you consume data from the TPO software with chatbots
          2. See data in the most convenient and visually-rich formats with advanced visualizations

          Solution Benefits & Features

          1. Create customizable reports and dashboards without depending on skilled crew
          2. Easy to use for both power and non-power users

          How Compass Works?

          Underline Fmcg analysis

          Related Articles

          Underline

          Request a Demo

          Underline
      • Data Services
        • Trade Promotion Optimization Software: Everything You Must Know

          Request For Demo Learn more Trade Promotion Optimization Softwares Everything Know Banner Image

          Our Customers Around The World

          Underline Clientsv3 1
          What Is Trade Promotion Optimization image

          Chapter 1

          What is Trade Promotion Optimization

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths And Challenges image

          Chapter 2

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths and Challenges

          Must Have Capabilities In A Trade Promotion Optimization Solution image

          Chapter 3

          Must-have capabilities in a TPO solution

          Artificial Intelligence In Trade Promotion Optimization image

          Chapter 4

          Artificial Intelligence in Trade Promotion Optimization

          What An Ai Powered Promotion Analysis Looks Like image

          Chapter 5

          What an AI-Powered Promotion Analysis Looks Like

          Case Study image

          Chapter 6

          Case-study

          About Compass image

          Chapter 7

          About Compass

          Chapter 1

          What is Trade Promotion Optimization

          This chapter is all about the basics and the current state of CPG trade promotions. It’ll help us get the definitions right before we delve into the actual topic.

          Trade Promotion Optimization

          The Current State of Trade Promotions

          Underline Cpg Trade Promotions

          of CPG trade promotion spending doesn’t drive the desired results

          - Nielsen Holdings

          Trade Promotions

          of the money was lost by most of the manufacturers who invest in trade promotions

          - Booz Allen Hamilton

          Fmcg Trade Promotions

          of trade promotions globally don't break even

          - Nielsen Holdings

          Tpo

          improvement on trade promotion ROI will improve the top line by 10% and operating margins by 3-5%

          - Economic Times Retail

          Even though the trade promotions spend take up a lion’s share of the organizational revenue, traditionally manufacturers have always struggled in optimizing their promotion mix for achieving the maximum bang for the buck. CPG companies typically take a two-step approach to implementing trade promotions – Trade Promotion Optimization and Trade Promotion Management (TPM). Let’s start by establishing the core definitions of both and how they are different from each other.

          Trade Promotion Optimization (TPO): TPO is the process of continuously improving the effectiveness of trade promotion strategies by optimizing them based on your business goals and current supply and promotion constraints. The key objective of TPO is to maximize the value every dollar invested in trade promotions. It follows the famous motto of “Build, Measure, Learn and Repeat”.

          The software which support and enable this entire process is Trade Promotion Optimization Software. These solutions are equipped with a range of predictive modelling, analytics and data harmonization capabilities.

          Trade Promotion Management (TPM): TPM focuses more on the internal execution and operational part of trade promotions. This can include defining new promotions, allocating budgets at various stages for different departments, retail activity management, tracking promotions and managing funds, authorizing payments etc.

          TPM systems lack or have limited forecasting and promotion effectiveness analysis capabilities - things that are critical to profitably optimizing your trade spend
          Chapter 2

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths and Challenges

          Even though many companies recognize the importance of powerful TPO procedure, organizational and technological challenges often limit teams from implementing an effective TPO. In this chapter we will debunk some popular TPO myths and discuss common challenges.

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths and Challenges images

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths

          Underline

          Myth #1 We already have a TPM system in place. We won’t need an additional TPO system

          This is the most common excuse we hear when we talk to CPG companies about their trade promotion challenges. TPM systems are needed to “manage” promotions i.e you can use them to define promotions, track spending or schedule invoices to retailers or any other operational/transactional activities. However, the capabilities of these systems are limited to just planning and execution.

          A majority of TPM solutions can’t integrate data from key influential sources like POS, digital media, weather etc.he post-event analysis and what-if scenario building capabilities are also very limited in most TPM software.

          Always build the trade promotion optimization (TPO) into your trade promotion management approach - Gartner

          Companies should look at choosing a TPO solution which can seamlessly integrate into their existing TPM system. This enables both systems to work in tandem with each other and centralize all your trade promotion activities.

          Read More: 6 Best Practices For Moving From TPM to TPO

          Myth #2 We will face adoption issues from our sales teams

          Any reliable TPO solution should be extremely user-friendly. Advanced visualizations and seamless navigation flows are some key elements to look for while choosing a TPO solution and have elements which will help with better adoption by users.

          In addition, a TPO solution should  automate post-event analysis and data-entry. Without automation, field-sales teams need to manually enter data which is not only unproductive but also prone to human-error. Obtaining  information for better decision making is a huge challenge.

          Integrating AI chatbots with the TPO solution is one another effective way to increase adoption among field-sales personnel. Chatbots simplify the way you interact with data and eliminate the need to switch windows or drill dashboards.

          Read More: 5 Amazing Business Benefits of Data Visualization

          Myth #3 Deploying a new TPO system is both cost and time intensive

          Unlike your typical TPM systems which need a considerable amount of time to go live, TPO systems can be deployed within a few weeks. And while it’s true that these systems can’t really be termed “cost-friendly” but companies need to think about the ROI delivered by these systems.

          Today a mere 15% improvement on Trade Promotion ROI will improve the top line by 10% and operating margins by 3-5%. If you are in the CPG business, you probably must be well aware of the increased competition from local brands in the last decade. And this is most likely to increase further in the coming years.

          In such a scenario, you no longer can afford taking critical business decisions based on gut or partial intelligence or past experiences.

          Success in the CPG industry is largely based on decisions – decisions which are accurate and taken at a lightening speed. While decision-making does depend on several factors, it’s highly important to leverage emerging technologies like TPO solutions which will improve and simplify it.   

          Information is the oil of the 21st century and analysis is the combustion engine - Gartner

          Read More: 5 Trade Promotion Optimization Myths You Need To Stop Believing

          Trade Promotion Optimization Challenges

          Underline

          Challenge # 1 Data Availability

          There are numerous types of data which needs to be considered before devising or optimizing trade promotion strategies. These could include POS data or Syndicated data from data brokers or past promotion data etc. However most companies spend heavily and depend solely on syndicated data for taking decisions.

          Read More: Data Brokers – How Can Consumer Goods Companies Maximize ROI

          While this type of data is important to capture, there are numerous other influential data types which need to be harnessed to increase data accuracy and get a big picture view of reality. Another popular challenge is siloed data. Your POS data remains at one place, syndicated data in another, social media data at some other place. This limits the efficiency and productiveness of decision-makers as they can’t process and analyze data effortlessly.

          Challenge #2 Sole reliance on spreadsheets for data consumption

          Most decision-makers in the CPG business still are reliant on some custom-built spreadsheets for data consumption. Even though many business users are accustomed to using Excel, the lack of flexibility of these sheets decreases the speed and accuracy of decision-making.

          Especially as the amount of data to be processed increases, decision-makers have to spend more time analyzing data and less time gaining insights from it. Also, manual data entry into spreadsheets is very tedious for field-sales teams and prone to human errors.

          Challenge #3 High dependency on IT or MIS teams

          This is another common challenge which disables TPO teams from leveraging data for decision-making. Business teams usually have to depend on highly-skilled crew like IT or MIS personnel or Data Scientists to get new report formats or update the existing ones with the latest data. This is a complicated process and hard to incorporate in the daily work flows of a decision-maker.

          Read More: The 5 major benefits of self-service BI

          Know More About Our Self-Service BI Services

          Challenge #4 Inaccurate post promotion analysis

          Due to the above challenges and various other organization-specific problems, TPO teams cannot powerfully measure the effectiveness of trade promotions and clearly identify low and high yield promotions. Thereby budget and resource allocation cannot be done effectively.

          Challenge #5 Lack of tools with powerful analytical capabilities

          Most companies depend on their typical corporate systems like TPM or ERP systems for trade spend analysis. However, trade promotion planning, measurement and optimization require tools with strong analytical capabilities. A majority of existing TPM systems only offer effective control mechanisms.

          Challenge #6 Focus on incorrect metrics

          Even though there is a quick realization that profitability carries more weight than volume, business teams – from field sales to marketing are still focusing on volume. But volume and profitable volume are two entirely different things. Focus on achieving profit should be embedded within every department of the organization.

          Read More: Trade Promotion Optimization: Challanges and How AI Can Help

          Chapter 3

          Must-have capabilities in a Trade Promotion Optimization solution

          The TPO software market is huge and there are numerous vendors who promise a wide-range of features. In this chapter, we’ll explore some important capabilities you must look for while evaluating solutions.

          Must-have capabilities in a Trade Promotion Optimization solution image

          It’s imperative to understand the different steps involved in trade promotion optimization and important capabilities required to effectively execute each step.

          6 key steps of trade promotion optimization

          Underline Data Integration image

          Data integration and harmonization

          Active sales image

          Promotion effectiveness measurement and analysis

          Sales Forcasting image

          Sales
          forecasting

          Promotion Optimization image

          Promotion optimization

          Publishing To Tpm Solution image

          Publishing to TPM solution

          Bussiness Adoption image

          Business Adoption

          1. Data integration and harmonization

          In most CPG companies data is stored in disparate silos, disabling decision-makers to have holistic view of reality. An effective TPO solution should be able to bring together high-quality real-time data from different internal and external sources with no errors. Ideally the solution should also have data cleansing capability to ensure consistent and accurate data.

          To ensure data accuracy, the solution should also be fed with data from multiple influential data sources and market touch points. This combined raw data acts as a strong foundation on which a powerful analysis can be run to glean insights.

          Important data sources your TPO solution should capture

          Underline Different types of data compass captures images

          1. Internal data

          • Market research: Market, consumer and competitor information from analysts.
          • Past promotions: Information on different trade promotions run for different products and their effectiveness.
          • Primary sales: Sales from the manufacturer to distributor/retailer
          • Secondary sales: Sales from the distributor/ retailer to the end customer.
          • Marketing campaigns: Ongoing and future marketing activities that can impact your trade promotion ROI.
          • Point of Sales: The basket of items which a customer buys at a retail outlet
          Read More: POS Data Analysis – How Can Retailers and Consumer Goods Companies Make the Most of it Trade Promotion Optimization: Challanges and How AI Can Help
          Check out our POS Analytics Solutions

          2. External data

          • Syndicated data: Data from Nielsen, IRI, SPINS and other data brokers etc.
          • Weather: Consumer behaviours change based on seasons or environmental factors like flu, pollen etc. and this can impact your sales or trade promotions. The TPO solution should be integrated with past, future and current weather data.

          Read More: How Weather Impacts Retail Sales & How Big Data Analytics Can Help

          Check Out Our Weather Analytics Solution
          • Events: Major events like a famous musician’s performance or a sporting event can alter consumers’ behaviour towards certain type of products (ex: A football event can trigger more sales for a beverage)
          • Digital Media: 
          • 58% of survey respondents rate their capabilities at the intersection of digital and trade promotion as “lagging" Promotion Optimization Institute
          • As digital marketing continue to increase in the consumer goods business, it is essential to learn what consumers are searching for, tweeting about, how they are mentioning your and competitor brand or responding to particular Facebook or Instagram campaign and so on. However this type of data is largely unstructured and generated real-time.

            Traditional TPO solutions miss this vital information. If you are evaluating vendors, ensure their solution captures and harnesses digital data. An ideal TPO solution needs to provide a comprehensive and single window view of all types of data and reports.

          Read More: Our Data Integration Services

          2. Promotion effectiveness measurement and analysis

          The current obstacle to more meaningful post-event analytics is that it largely lacks automation - Promotion Optimization Institute

          Automate Post-Event Analysis

          Post-promotion/event analysis is a key feature of any TPO solution. Lack of automation results in manual compiling of data and over burdening of your field sales teams.

          In a POI research, it is found that only 39% of CG companies have some level of automation in their TPO solution. Automation allows you to see the performance of as many promotions as you want and as often as you want. It also relieves burden on your field teams and eliminates human-error which can occur due to manual data-entry.

          In-depth Insights

          Promotion effectiveness dashboard image

          The solution should display key metrics like growth, sales uplift, ROI, volume, profitability for every promotion and offer the flexibility to view at brand, location, retailer levels.

          Check Out Our Post Promotion Analytics Solutions

          3. Promotion forecasting and planning

          Post-promotion/event analysis is a key feature of any TPO solution. Lack of automation results in manual compiling of data and over burdening of your field sales teams.

          In a POI research, it is found that only 39% of CG companies have some level of automation in their TPO solution. Automation allows you to see the performance of as many promotions as you want and as often as you want. It also relieves burden on your field teams and eliminates human-error which can occur due to manual data-entry.

          4. Promotion optimization

          The solution should be able to optimize trade spend based on the given promotion combinations forecasted and recommend which promotions should be run based on

          a.The constraints defined. eg: budget for a region.

          b.The objectives which need to be achieved i.e either to increase volume or gain market share or increase revenue or increase profit.

          The solution should allow the planner to simulate various promotion scenarios and pick the best scenario based on the sales uplift and profit predicted for various scenarios.

          5. Publishing to TPM solution

          The solution should seamlessly integrate into your existing TPM and ERP systems and allow you to schedule and publish plans to your sales teams.

          6 Business Adoption

          TPO initiatives usually fail because of the required change management. And Business users face challenges with learning to use the solution and getting access to information and data to make better decisions. As a result they go back to the old way of using  custom-built excel sheets to make their decisions . This challenge can be overcome by embedding AI chatbots into the TPO solution.

          Chapter 4

          Artificial Intelligence in Trade Promotion Optimization

          According to Gartner, AI technologies will be in almost every software product by 2020. And TPO systems are no different. Modern trade promotion optimization solutions are leveraging AI to harness data and produce actionable intelligence.

          Artificial Intelligence in Trade Promotion Optimization image

          Traditional analytics like descriptive and diagnostic analytics have always been a part of TPO solutions. While these analytics technologies do provide some key insights, most of them are non-actionable.

          Consumer Goods and Retail businesses produce massive amounts of data every day and an powerful harnessing of this humongous data requires advanced technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

          Advanced analytics like predictive and prescriptive analytics are powered with AI and machine learning and add the much needed “intelligence” part to the TPO software. Unlike traditional analytics which provide shallow insights, Advanced analytics turn data into meaningful insights – insights which are actionable and enable you to take a decision quickly and more accurately.

          Traditional Analytics

          • What happened
          • How Many
          • How Often etc.
          • Why is this happening ?

          Predictive and Prescriptive Analytics

          • What happened
          • How Many
          • How often
          • Why is this happening?
          • What will happen in the future and what should i do about it?
          • Which promotions are delivering the highest ROI and why?
          • What is the lost sales percentage?
          • What is the right promotion mix strategy for the upcoming quarter?
          • How can I maximize my trade promotion ROI?
          • What is my expected ROI if I price Brand A 3 USD more than Brand B for the next 3 months?
          • What are my predicted sales if I keep Brand A at base price for the next 6 months and promote Brand B for a BOGO for the next 1 month?
          • What is the retailer performance in a location for a specific time period and for a specific product?

          Build What-if scenario scenarios

          Advanced analytics allow you to build different virtual promotional scenarios and gives the estimated ROI in each scenario. This estimated ROI is provided based on the harnessing of the data fed to the software. You can build different scenarios by changing different parameters like brand, price, promotion, location, duration etc. and learn the estimated ROI and sales uplift before actually running the promotion.

          Examples

          1. What is my estimated ROI if I run a BOGO for Brand A for 2 months at City B for Price C?
          2. What will be my sales uplift if I offer half price for Brand X and keep Brand Y at base price for the next 1 month?

          Identify trends and patterns in the data

          Advanced analytics leverage machine learning to capture trends in your past promotions and their impact which you might not be aware of. This can include alerting you if there is a dip in sales or if there is an increase in promotion ROI etc. This data discovery helps you take better decisions and run promotions that matter.

          Leverage unstructured data

          Unstructured content already accounts for a staggering 90 percent of all digital data, much of which is locked away across a variety of different data stores, in different locations and in varying formats - IDC

          Data from crucial data sources like digital and social media, TRP, events, POS are largely unstructured and cannot be harnessed by traditional analytics. Big data and AI technologies such as Machine Learning (ML) harness and convert this raw, unstructured data into meaningful insights.

          Get fact-based recommendations and forecasts

          Based on the data fed, advanced analytics provide recommendations and tell you what can be the next best step. You can get crisp prescriptions like “Run promotion A for location B for 1 month to get sales uplift on Y percent”, allowing you to glean insights from the analysis instead of you doing the tedious data analysis process and deciding by yourself.

          Read More: A Quick Guide To Choosing a Trade Promotion Optimization Software

          Chapter 5

          What an AI-Powered Promotion Analysis Looks Like

          Check out the different dashboards of our AI enabled TPO solution - Compass

          AI-Powered Promotion Analysis image

          Measure Trade Promotion Effectiveness

          Cpg promotion effectiveness image

          Compare sales with various parameters

          Compass promotion plan image

          Actual sales vs Predicted
          Sales

          predicted chart image

          Get a 360-degree view on impact of sales

          sales portal dashboard images
          Chapter 6

          Case study

          Acuvate reduces trade promotion spend for a transnational Consumer Goods company by 100k USD

          Case-study images

          About the Company

          Underline

          It is a transnational consumer goods company co-headquartered in Netherlands and London, United Kingdom.

          Its products include several food and beverage, cleaning agents and personal care products. It is the world's largest consumer goods company (measured by 2012 revenue) and the world's largest producer of food spreads.

          It is Europe’s 7th-most valuable company and one of the oldest multinational companies with products across 190 countries.

          1. Business Scenario

          • The Client had a challenge in calculating and monitoring the the Sales Uplift for various promotions being run in the emerging markets.

            The sales and revenue management teams had a promotion calendar which is defined in Excel sheets. The company purchased only the sales and market share data from Nielsen Holdings and don’t have the crucial data of past promotions and pricing.

            This impacted the accuracy in decision-making and teams were unable to analyze

            1. The impact and effectiveness of various promotions on different products.
            2. The sales uplift created by each promotion.

            As a result identifying the right promotion for the right scenario became a challenge.

          2. Solution

          • Acuvate used its domain and technology expertise to meet the client’s requirement. The solution was used for two markets and one category.

            The solution included

            • Extracting data from spreadsheets and integrating the same into a Data Mart
            • Calculating the base sales by comparing periods where Promotions were not present for an SKU
            • Calculating the Sales Uplift and growth for each Promotion

            This solution allowed the sales and revenue management teams to identify

            • Which promotions were creating an uplift and for which specific SKUs.
            • Which SKUs were negatively impacted by the promotions run.

          3. Benefits and Features

          • Using the solution, users were able to

                 a) Identify the Sales Uplift vs Target for each promotion.

                b) Increase sales by getting actionable recommendations on the best promotions to be run and understanding which ones work.

                c) Set alerts if the Sales uplift goes below a specific number.

                d) View dashboards on mobile and ask natural language questions as well to get the needed data.

          ROI

          Underline Reduced image

          Reduced Trade Promotions spend by 100K USD

          Reduced In Manual image

          Reduced In Manual effort by 500 person hours

          Increased Revenue image

          Increased
          revenue

          Faster Decisions image

          Faster decisions through actionable recommendations and analysis

          Chapter 7

          About Compass

          Retail Business Intelligence Solution banner image

          Explore Acuvate’s Trade Promotion Optimization Software, Compass.

          Compass is Acuvate’s Trade Promotion Optimization software which leverages Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and Advanced Analytics. It is created on the primary motto of making data work to get maximum bang for the buck for your trade promotions. Measure, Forecast, Analyze, Optimize and Repeat.

          Key Capability image

          The different features of Compass

          Underline

          High-Quality Data Lake

          1. Capture data from multiple
            external and internal
            sources including digital
            media, weather, events,
            POS, competitor intelligence
            and beyond.
          2. Cleanse the data to remove
            duplicates and also
            effectively organize the
            Same.
          3. Convert Unstructured data
            to structured.

          AI & Machine Learning

          1. Run promotions with an intelligent and convenient analysis of data.
          2. Detect key insights and anomalies in promotional data
          3. Unlike traditional analytics which provides shallow insights, predictive and prescriptive analytics forecast and prescribes the right actions to maximize the ROI of your promotions.
          4. Crucial what-if scenarios will be addressed as well.

          AI Bots & Advanced Visualizations

          1. Simplify the way you consume data from the TPO software with chatbots
          2. See data in the most convenient and visually-rich formats with advanced visualizations

          Solution Benefits & Features

          1. Create customizable reports and dashboards without depending on skilled crew
          2. Easy to use for both power and non-power users

          How Compass Works?

          Underline Fmcg analysis

          Related Articles

          Underline

          Request a Demo

          Underline
    • Analytics & Insights
      • Trade Promotion Optimization Software: Everything You Must Know

        Request For Demo Learn more Trade Promotion Optimization Softwares Everything Know Banner Image

        Our Customers Around The World

        Underline Clientsv3 1
        What Is Trade Promotion Optimization image

        Chapter 1

        What is Trade Promotion Optimization

        Trade Promotion Optimization Myths And Challenges image

        Chapter 2

        Trade Promotion Optimization Myths and Challenges

        Must Have Capabilities In A Trade Promotion Optimization Solution image

        Chapter 3

        Must-have capabilities in a TPO solution

        Artificial Intelligence In Trade Promotion Optimization image

        Chapter 4

        Artificial Intelligence in Trade Promotion Optimization

        What An Ai Powered Promotion Analysis Looks Like image

        Chapter 5

        What an AI-Powered Promotion Analysis Looks Like

        Case Study image

        Chapter 6

        Case-study

        About Compass image

        Chapter 7

        About Compass

        Chapter 1

        What is Trade Promotion Optimization

        This chapter is all about the basics and the current state of CPG trade promotions. It’ll help us get the definitions right before we delve into the actual topic.

        Trade Promotion Optimization

        The Current State of Trade Promotions

        Underline Cpg Trade Promotions

        of CPG trade promotion spending doesn’t drive the desired results

        - Nielsen Holdings

        Trade Promotions

        of the money was lost by most of the manufacturers who invest in trade promotions

        - Booz Allen Hamilton

        Fmcg Trade Promotions

        of trade promotions globally don't break even

        - Nielsen Holdings

        Tpo

        improvement on trade promotion ROI will improve the top line by 10% and operating margins by 3-5%

        - Economic Times Retail

        Even though the trade promotions spend take up a lion’s share of the organizational revenue, traditionally manufacturers have always struggled in optimizing their promotion mix for achieving the maximum bang for the buck. CPG companies typically take a two-step approach to implementing trade promotions – Trade Promotion Optimization and Trade Promotion Management (TPM). Let’s start by establishing the core definitions of both and how they are different from each other.

        Trade Promotion Optimization (TPO): TPO is the process of continuously improving the effectiveness of trade promotion strategies by optimizing them based on your business goals and current supply and promotion constraints. The key objective of TPO is to maximize the value every dollar invested in trade promotions. It follows the famous motto of “Build, Measure, Learn and Repeat”.

        The software which support and enable this entire process is Trade Promotion Optimization Software. These solutions are equipped with a range of predictive modelling, analytics and data harmonization capabilities.

        Trade Promotion Management (TPM): TPM focuses more on the internal execution and operational part of trade promotions. This can include defining new promotions, allocating budgets at various stages for different departments, retail activity management, tracking promotions and managing funds, authorizing payments etc.

        TPM systems lack or have limited forecasting and promotion effectiveness analysis capabilities - things that are critical to profitably optimizing your trade spend
        Chapter 2

        Trade Promotion Optimization Myths and Challenges

        Even though many companies recognize the importance of powerful TPO procedure, organizational and technological challenges often limit teams from implementing an effective TPO. In this chapter we will debunk some popular TPO myths and discuss common challenges.

        Trade Promotion Optimization Myths and Challenges images

        Trade Promotion Optimization Myths

        Underline

        Myth #1 We already have a TPM system in place. We won’t need an additional TPO system

        This is the most common excuse we hear when we talk to CPG companies about their trade promotion challenges. TPM systems are needed to “manage” promotions i.e you can use them to define promotions, track spending or schedule invoices to retailers or any other operational/transactional activities. However, the capabilities of these systems are limited to just planning and execution.

        A majority of TPM solutions can’t integrate data from key influential sources like POS, digital media, weather etc.he post-event analysis and what-if scenario building capabilities are also very limited in most TPM software.

        Always build the trade promotion optimization (TPO) into your trade promotion management approach - Gartner

        Companies should look at choosing a TPO solution which can seamlessly integrate into their existing TPM system. This enables both systems to work in tandem with each other and centralize all your trade promotion activities.

        Read More: 6 Best Practices For Moving From TPM to TPO

        Myth #2 We will face adoption issues from our sales teams

        Any reliable TPO solution should be extremely user-friendly. Advanced visualizations and seamless navigation flows are some key elements to look for while choosing a TPO solution and have elements which will help with better adoption by users.

        In addition, a TPO solution should  automate post-event analysis and data-entry. Without automation, field-sales teams need to manually enter data which is not only unproductive but also prone to human-error. Obtaining  information for better decision making is a huge challenge.

        Integrating AI chatbots with the TPO solution is one another effective way to increase adoption among field-sales personnel. Chatbots simplify the way you interact with data and eliminate the need to switch windows or drill dashboards.

        Read More: 5 Amazing Business Benefits of Data Visualization

        Myth #3 Deploying a new TPO system is both cost and time intensive

        Unlike your typical TPM systems which need a considerable amount of time to go live, TPO systems can be deployed within a few weeks. And while it’s true that these systems can’t really be termed “cost-friendly” but companies need to think about the ROI delivered by these systems.

        Today a mere 15% improvement on Trade Promotion ROI will improve the top line by 10% and operating margins by 3-5%. If you are in the CPG business, you probably must be well aware of the increased competition from local brands in the last decade. And this is most likely to increase further in the coming years.

        In such a scenario, you no longer can afford taking critical business decisions based on gut or partial intelligence or past experiences.

        Success in the CPG industry is largely based on decisions – decisions which are accurate and taken at a lightening speed. While decision-making does depend on several factors, it’s highly important to leverage emerging technologies like TPO solutions which will improve and simplify it.   

        Information is the oil of the 21st century and analysis is the combustion engine - Gartner

        Read More: 5 Trade Promotion Optimization Myths You Need To Stop Believing

        Trade Promotion Optimization Challenges

        Underline

        Challenge # 1 Data Availability

        There are numerous types of data which needs to be considered before devising or optimizing trade promotion strategies. These could include POS data or Syndicated data from data brokers or past promotion data etc. However most companies spend heavily and depend solely on syndicated data for taking decisions.

        Read More: Data Brokers – How Can Consumer Goods Companies Maximize ROI

        While this type of data is important to capture, there are numerous other influential data types which need to be harnessed to increase data accuracy and get a big picture view of reality. Another popular challenge is siloed data. Your POS data remains at one place, syndicated data in another, social media data at some other place. This limits the efficiency and productiveness of decision-makers as they can’t process and analyze data effortlessly.

        Challenge #2 Sole reliance on spreadsheets for data consumption

        Most decision-makers in the CPG business still are reliant on some custom-built spreadsheets for data consumption. Even though many business users are accustomed to using Excel, the lack of flexibility of these sheets decreases the speed and accuracy of decision-making.

        Especially as the amount of data to be processed increases, decision-makers have to spend more time analyzing data and less time gaining insights from it. Also, manual data entry into spreadsheets is very tedious for field-sales teams and prone to human errors.

        Challenge #3 High dependency on IT or MIS teams

        This is another common challenge which disables TPO teams from leveraging data for decision-making. Business teams usually have to depend on highly-skilled crew like IT or MIS personnel or Data Scientists to get new report formats or update the existing ones with the latest data. This is a complicated process and hard to incorporate in the daily work flows of a decision-maker.

        Read More: The 5 major benefits of self-service BI

        Know More About Our Self-Service BI Services

        Challenge #4 Inaccurate post promotion analysis

        Due to the above challenges and various other organization-specific problems, TPO teams cannot powerfully measure the effectiveness of trade promotions and clearly identify low and high yield promotions. Thereby budget and resource allocation cannot be done effectively.

        Challenge #5 Lack of tools with powerful analytical capabilities

        Most companies depend on their typical corporate systems like TPM or ERP systems for trade spend analysis. However, trade promotion planning, measurement and optimization require tools with strong analytical capabilities. A majority of existing TPM systems only offer effective control mechanisms.

        Challenge #6 Focus on incorrect metrics

        Even though there is a quick realization that profitability carries more weight than volume, business teams – from field sales to marketing are still focusing on volume. But volume and profitable volume are two entirely different things. Focus on achieving profit should be embedded within every department of the organization.

        Read More: Trade Promotion Optimization: Challanges and How AI Can Help

        Chapter 3

        Must-have capabilities in a Trade Promotion Optimization solution

        The TPO software market is huge and there are numerous vendors who promise a wide-range of features. In this chapter, we’ll explore some important capabilities you must look for while evaluating solutions.

        Must-have capabilities in a Trade Promotion Optimization solution image

        It’s imperative to understand the different steps involved in trade promotion optimization and important capabilities required to effectively execute each step.

        6 key steps of trade promotion optimization

        Underline Data Integration image

        Data integration and harmonization

        Active sales image

        Promotion effectiveness measurement and analysis

        Sales Forcasting image

        Sales
        forecasting

        Promotion Optimization image

        Promotion optimization

        Publishing To Tpm Solution image

        Publishing to TPM solution

        Bussiness Adoption image

        Business Adoption

        1. Data integration and harmonization

        In most CPG companies data is stored in disparate silos, disabling decision-makers to have holistic view of reality. An effective TPO solution should be able to bring together high-quality real-time data from different internal and external sources with no errors. Ideally the solution should also have data cleansing capability to ensure consistent and accurate data.

        To ensure data accuracy, the solution should also be fed with data from multiple influential data sources and market touch points. This combined raw data acts as a strong foundation on which a powerful analysis can be run to glean insights.

        Important data sources your TPO solution should capture

        Underline Different types of data compass captures images

        1. Internal data

        • Market research: Market, consumer and competitor information from analysts.
        • Past promotions: Information on different trade promotions run for different products and their effectiveness.
        • Primary sales: Sales from the manufacturer to distributor/retailer
        • Secondary sales: Sales from the distributor/ retailer to the end customer.
        • Marketing campaigns: Ongoing and future marketing activities that can impact your trade promotion ROI.
        • Point of Sales: The basket of items which a customer buys at a retail outlet
        Read More: POS Data Analysis – How Can Retailers and Consumer Goods Companies Make the Most of it Trade Promotion Optimization: Challanges and How AI Can Help
        Check out our POS Analytics Solutions

        2. External data

        • Syndicated data: Data from Nielsen, IRI, SPINS and other data brokers etc.
        • Weather: Consumer behaviours change based on seasons or environmental factors like flu, pollen etc. and this can impact your sales or trade promotions. The TPO solution should be integrated with past, future and current weather data.

        Read More: How Weather Impacts Retail Sales & How Big Data Analytics Can Help

        Check Out Our Weather Analytics Solution
        • Events: Major events like a famous musician’s performance or a sporting event can alter consumers’ behaviour towards certain type of products (ex: A football event can trigger more sales for a beverage)
        • Digital Media: 
        • 58% of survey respondents rate their capabilities at the intersection of digital and trade promotion as “lagging" Promotion Optimization Institute
        • As digital marketing continue to increase in the consumer goods business, it is essential to learn what consumers are searching for, tweeting about, how they are mentioning your and competitor brand or responding to particular Facebook or Instagram campaign and so on. However this type of data is largely unstructured and generated real-time.

          Traditional TPO solutions miss this vital information. If you are evaluating vendors, ensure their solution captures and harnesses digital data. An ideal TPO solution needs to provide a comprehensive and single window view of all types of data and reports.

        Read More: Our Data Integration Services

        2. Promotion effectiveness measurement and analysis

        The current obstacle to more meaningful post-event analytics is that it largely lacks automation - Promotion Optimization Institute

        Automate Post-Event Analysis

        Post-promotion/event analysis is a key feature of any TPO solution. Lack of automation results in manual compiling of data and over burdening of your field sales teams.

        In a POI research, it is found that only 39% of CG companies have some level of automation in their TPO solution. Automation allows you to see the performance of as many promotions as you want and as often as you want. It also relieves burden on your field teams and eliminates human-error which can occur due to manual data-entry.

        In-depth Insights

        Promotion effectiveness dashboard image

        The solution should display key metrics like growth, sales uplift, ROI, volume, profitability for every promotion and offer the flexibility to view at brand, location, retailer levels.

        Check Out Our Post Promotion Analytics Solutions

        3. Promotion forecasting and planning

        Post-promotion/event analysis is a key feature of any TPO solution. Lack of automation results in manual compiling of data and over burdening of your field sales teams.

        In a POI research, it is found that only 39% of CG companies have some level of automation in their TPO solution. Automation allows you to see the performance of as many promotions as you want and as often as you want. It also relieves burden on your field teams and eliminates human-error which can occur due to manual data-entry.

        4. Promotion optimization

        The solution should be able to optimize trade spend based on the given promotion combinations forecasted and recommend which promotions should be run based on

        a.The constraints defined. eg: budget for a region.

        b.The objectives which need to be achieved i.e either to increase volume or gain market share or increase revenue or increase profit.

        The solution should allow the planner to simulate various promotion scenarios and pick the best scenario based on the sales uplift and profit predicted for various scenarios.

        5. Publishing to TPM solution

        The solution should seamlessly integrate into your existing TPM and ERP systems and allow you to schedule and publish plans to your sales teams.

        6 Business Adoption

        TPO initiatives usually fail because of the required change management. And Business users face challenges with learning to use the solution and getting access to information and data to make better decisions. As a result they go back to the old way of using  custom-built excel sheets to make their decisions . This challenge can be overcome by embedding AI chatbots into the TPO solution.

        Chapter 4

        Artificial Intelligence in Trade Promotion Optimization

        According to Gartner, AI technologies will be in almost every software product by 2020. And TPO systems are no different. Modern trade promotion optimization solutions are leveraging AI to harness data and produce actionable intelligence.

        Artificial Intelligence in Trade Promotion Optimization image

        Traditional analytics like descriptive and diagnostic analytics have always been a part of TPO solutions. While these analytics technologies do provide some key insights, most of them are non-actionable.

        Consumer Goods and Retail businesses produce massive amounts of data every day and an powerful harnessing of this humongous data requires advanced technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

        Advanced analytics like predictive and prescriptive analytics are powered with AI and machine learning and add the much needed “intelligence” part to the TPO software. Unlike traditional analytics which provide shallow insights, Advanced analytics turn data into meaningful insights – insights which are actionable and enable you to take a decision quickly and more accurately.

        Traditional Analytics

        • What happened
        • How Many
        • How Often etc.
        • Why is this happening ?

        Predictive and Prescriptive Analytics

        • What happened
        • How Many
        • How often
        • Why is this happening?
        • What will happen in the future and what should i do about it?
        • Which promotions are delivering the highest ROI and why?
        • What is the lost sales percentage?
        • What is the right promotion mix strategy for the upcoming quarter?
        • How can I maximize my trade promotion ROI?
        • What is my expected ROI if I price Brand A 3 USD more than Brand B for the next 3 months?
        • What are my predicted sales if I keep Brand A at base price for the next 6 months and promote Brand B for a BOGO for the next 1 month?
        • What is the retailer performance in a location for a specific time period and for a specific product?

        Build What-if scenario scenarios

        Advanced analytics allow you to build different virtual promotional scenarios and gives the estimated ROI in each scenario. This estimated ROI is provided based on the harnessing of the data fed to the software. You can build different scenarios by changing different parameters like brand, price, promotion, location, duration etc. and learn the estimated ROI and sales uplift before actually running the promotion.

        Examples

        1. What is my estimated ROI if I run a BOGO for Brand A for 2 months at City B for Price C?
        2. What will be my sales uplift if I offer half price for Brand X and keep Brand Y at base price for the next 1 month?

        Identify trends and patterns in the data

        Advanced analytics leverage machine learning to capture trends in your past promotions and their impact which you might not be aware of. This can include alerting you if there is a dip in sales or if there is an increase in promotion ROI etc. This data discovery helps you take better decisions and run promotions that matter.

        Leverage unstructured data

        Unstructured content already accounts for a staggering 90 percent of all digital data, much of which is locked away across a variety of different data stores, in different locations and in varying formats - IDC

        Data from crucial data sources like digital and social media, TRP, events, POS are largely unstructured and cannot be harnessed by traditional analytics. Big data and AI technologies such as Machine Learning (ML) harness and convert this raw, unstructured data into meaningful insights.

        Get fact-based recommendations and forecasts

        Based on the data fed, advanced analytics provide recommendations and tell you what can be the next best step. You can get crisp prescriptions like “Run promotion A for location B for 1 month to get sales uplift on Y percent”, allowing you to glean insights from the analysis instead of you doing the tedious data analysis process and deciding by yourself.

        Read More: A Quick Guide To Choosing a Trade Promotion Optimization Software

        Chapter 5

        What an AI-Powered Promotion Analysis Looks Like

        Check out the different dashboards of our AI enabled TPO solution - Compass

        AI-Powered Promotion Analysis image

        Measure Trade Promotion Effectiveness

        Cpg promotion effectiveness image

        Compare sales with various parameters

        Compass promotion plan image

        Actual sales vs Predicted
        Sales

        predicted chart image

        Get a 360-degree view on impact of sales

        sales portal dashboard images
        Chapter 6

        Case study

        Acuvate reduces trade promotion spend for a transnational Consumer Goods company by 100k USD

        Case-study images

        About the Company

        Underline

        It is a transnational consumer goods company co-headquartered in Netherlands and London, United Kingdom.

        Its products include several food and beverage, cleaning agents and personal care products. It is the world's largest consumer goods company (measured by 2012 revenue) and the world's largest producer of food spreads.

        It is Europe’s 7th-most valuable company and one of the oldest multinational companies with products across 190 countries.

        1. Business Scenario

        • The Client had a challenge in calculating and monitoring the the Sales Uplift for various promotions being run in the emerging markets.

          The sales and revenue management teams had a promotion calendar which is defined in Excel sheets. The company purchased only the sales and market share data from Nielsen Holdings and don’t have the crucial data of past promotions and pricing.

          This impacted the accuracy in decision-making and teams were unable to analyze

          1. The impact and effectiveness of various promotions on different products.
          2. The sales uplift created by each promotion.

          As a result identifying the right promotion for the right scenario became a challenge.

        2. Solution

        • Acuvate used its domain and technology expertise to meet the client’s requirement. The solution was used for two markets and one category.

          The solution included

          • Extracting data from spreadsheets and integrating the same into a Data Mart
          • Calculating the base sales by comparing periods where Promotions were not present for an SKU
          • Calculating the Sales Uplift and growth for each Promotion

          This solution allowed the sales and revenue management teams to identify

          • Which promotions were creating an uplift and for which specific SKUs.
          • Which SKUs were negatively impacted by the promotions run.

        3. Benefits and Features

        • Using the solution, users were able to

               a) Identify the Sales Uplift vs Target for each promotion.

              b) Increase sales by getting actionable recommendations on the best promotions to be run and understanding which ones work.

              c) Set alerts if the Sales uplift goes below a specific number.

              d) View dashboards on mobile and ask natural language questions as well to get the needed data.

        ROI

        Underline Reduced image

        Reduced Trade Promotions spend by 100K USD

        Reduced In Manual image

        Reduced In Manual effort by 500 person hours

        Increased Revenue image

        Increased
        revenue

        Faster Decisions image

        Faster decisions through actionable recommendations and analysis

        Chapter 7

        About Compass

        Retail Business Intelligence Solution banner image

        Explore Acuvate’s Trade Promotion Optimization Software, Compass.

        Compass is Acuvate’s Trade Promotion Optimization software which leverages Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and Advanced Analytics. It is created on the primary motto of making data work to get maximum bang for the buck for your trade promotions. Measure, Forecast, Analyze, Optimize and Repeat.

        Key Capability image

        The different features of Compass

        Underline

        High-Quality Data Lake

        1. Capture data from multiple
          external and internal
          sources including digital
          media, weather, events,
          POS, competitor intelligence
          and beyond.
        2. Cleanse the data to remove
          duplicates and also
          effectively organize the
          Same.
        3. Convert Unstructured data
          to structured.

        AI & Machine Learning

        1. Run promotions with an intelligent and convenient analysis of data.
        2. Detect key insights and anomalies in promotional data
        3. Unlike traditional analytics which provides shallow insights, predictive and prescriptive analytics forecast and prescribes the right actions to maximize the ROI of your promotions.
        4. Crucial what-if scenarios will be addressed as well.

        AI Bots & Advanced Visualizations

        1. Simplify the way you consume data from the TPO software with chatbots
        2. See data in the most convenient and visually-rich formats with advanced visualizations

        Solution Benefits & Features

        1. Create customizable reports and dashboards without depending on skilled crew
        2. Easy to use for both power and non-power users

        How Compass Works?

        Underline Fmcg analysis

        Related Articles

        Underline

        Request a Demo

        Underline
      • Advanced Analytics
        • Trade Promotion Optimization Software: Everything You Must Know

          Request For Demo Learn more Trade Promotion Optimization Softwares Everything Know Banner Image

          Our Customers Around The World

          Underline Clientsv3 1
          What Is Trade Promotion Optimization image

          Chapter 1

          What is Trade Promotion Optimization

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths And Challenges image

          Chapter 2

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths and Challenges

          Must Have Capabilities In A Trade Promotion Optimization Solution image

          Chapter 3

          Must-have capabilities in a TPO solution

          Artificial Intelligence In Trade Promotion Optimization image

          Chapter 4

          Artificial Intelligence in Trade Promotion Optimization

          What An Ai Powered Promotion Analysis Looks Like image

          Chapter 5

          What an AI-Powered Promotion Analysis Looks Like

          Case Study image

          Chapter 6

          Case-study

          About Compass image

          Chapter 7

          About Compass

          Chapter 1

          What is Trade Promotion Optimization

          This chapter is all about the basics and the current state of CPG trade promotions. It’ll help us get the definitions right before we delve into the actual topic.

          Trade Promotion Optimization

          The Current State of Trade Promotions

          Underline Cpg Trade Promotions

          of CPG trade promotion spending doesn’t drive the desired results

          - Nielsen Holdings

          Trade Promotions

          of the money was lost by most of the manufacturers who invest in trade promotions

          - Booz Allen Hamilton

          Fmcg Trade Promotions

          of trade promotions globally don't break even

          - Nielsen Holdings

          Tpo

          improvement on trade promotion ROI will improve the top line by 10% and operating margins by 3-5%

          - Economic Times Retail

          Even though the trade promotions spend take up a lion’s share of the organizational revenue, traditionally manufacturers have always struggled in optimizing their promotion mix for achieving the maximum bang for the buck. CPG companies typically take a two-step approach to implementing trade promotions – Trade Promotion Optimization and Trade Promotion Management (TPM). Let’s start by establishing the core definitions of both and how they are different from each other.

          Trade Promotion Optimization (TPO): TPO is the process of continuously improving the effectiveness of trade promotion strategies by optimizing them based on your business goals and current supply and promotion constraints. The key objective of TPO is to maximize the value every dollar invested in trade promotions. It follows the famous motto of “Build, Measure, Learn and Repeat”.

          The software which support and enable this entire process is Trade Promotion Optimization Software. These solutions are equipped with a range of predictive modelling, analytics and data harmonization capabilities.

          Trade Promotion Management (TPM): TPM focuses more on the internal execution and operational part of trade promotions. This can include defining new promotions, allocating budgets at various stages for different departments, retail activity management, tracking promotions and managing funds, authorizing payments etc.

          TPM systems lack or have limited forecasting and promotion effectiveness analysis capabilities - things that are critical to profitably optimizing your trade spend
          Chapter 2

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths and Challenges

          Even though many companies recognize the importance of powerful TPO procedure, organizational and technological challenges often limit teams from implementing an effective TPO. In this chapter we will debunk some popular TPO myths and discuss common challenges.

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths and Challenges images

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths

          Underline

          Myth #1 We already have a TPM system in place. We won’t need an additional TPO system

          This is the most common excuse we hear when we talk to CPG companies about their trade promotion challenges. TPM systems are needed to “manage” promotions i.e you can use them to define promotions, track spending or schedule invoices to retailers or any other operational/transactional activities. However, the capabilities of these systems are limited to just planning and execution.

          A majority of TPM solutions can’t integrate data from key influential sources like POS, digital media, weather etc.he post-event analysis and what-if scenario building capabilities are also very limited in most TPM software.

          Always build the trade promotion optimization (TPO) into your trade promotion management approach - Gartner

          Companies should look at choosing a TPO solution which can seamlessly integrate into their existing TPM system. This enables both systems to work in tandem with each other and centralize all your trade promotion activities.

          Read More: 6 Best Practices For Moving From TPM to TPO

          Myth #2 We will face adoption issues from our sales teams

          Any reliable TPO solution should be extremely user-friendly. Advanced visualizations and seamless navigation flows are some key elements to look for while choosing a TPO solution and have elements which will help with better adoption by users.

          In addition, a TPO solution should  automate post-event analysis and data-entry. Without automation, field-sales teams need to manually enter data which is not only unproductive but also prone to human-error. Obtaining  information for better decision making is a huge challenge.

          Integrating AI chatbots with the TPO solution is one another effective way to increase adoption among field-sales personnel. Chatbots simplify the way you interact with data and eliminate the need to switch windows or drill dashboards.

          Read More: 5 Amazing Business Benefits of Data Visualization

          Myth #3 Deploying a new TPO system is both cost and time intensive

          Unlike your typical TPM systems which need a considerable amount of time to go live, TPO systems can be deployed within a few weeks. And while it’s true that these systems can’t really be termed “cost-friendly” but companies need to think about the ROI delivered by these systems.

          Today a mere 15% improvement on Trade Promotion ROI will improve the top line by 10% and operating margins by 3-5%. If you are in the CPG business, you probably must be well aware of the increased competition from local brands in the last decade. And this is most likely to increase further in the coming years.

          In such a scenario, you no longer can afford taking critical business decisions based on gut or partial intelligence or past experiences.

          Success in the CPG industry is largely based on decisions – decisions which are accurate and taken at a lightening speed. While decision-making does depend on several factors, it’s highly important to leverage emerging technologies like TPO solutions which will improve and simplify it.   

          Information is the oil of the 21st century and analysis is the combustion engine - Gartner

          Read More: 5 Trade Promotion Optimization Myths You Need To Stop Believing

          Trade Promotion Optimization Challenges

          Underline

          Challenge # 1 Data Availability

          There are numerous types of data which needs to be considered before devising or optimizing trade promotion strategies. These could include POS data or Syndicated data from data brokers or past promotion data etc. However most companies spend heavily and depend solely on syndicated data for taking decisions.

          Read More: Data Brokers – How Can Consumer Goods Companies Maximize ROI

          While this type of data is important to capture, there are numerous other influential data types which need to be harnessed to increase data accuracy and get a big picture view of reality. Another popular challenge is siloed data. Your POS data remains at one place, syndicated data in another, social media data at some other place. This limits the efficiency and productiveness of decision-makers as they can’t process and analyze data effortlessly.

          Challenge #2 Sole reliance on spreadsheets for data consumption

          Most decision-makers in the CPG business still are reliant on some custom-built spreadsheets for data consumption. Even though many business users are accustomed to using Excel, the lack of flexibility of these sheets decreases the speed and accuracy of decision-making.

          Especially as the amount of data to be processed increases, decision-makers have to spend more time analyzing data and less time gaining insights from it. Also, manual data entry into spreadsheets is very tedious for field-sales teams and prone to human errors.

          Challenge #3 High dependency on IT or MIS teams

          This is another common challenge which disables TPO teams from leveraging data for decision-making. Business teams usually have to depend on highly-skilled crew like IT or MIS personnel or Data Scientists to get new report formats or update the existing ones with the latest data. This is a complicated process and hard to incorporate in the daily work flows of a decision-maker.

          Read More: The 5 major benefits of self-service BI

          Know More About Our Self-Service BI Services

          Challenge #4 Inaccurate post promotion analysis

          Due to the above challenges and various other organization-specific problems, TPO teams cannot powerfully measure the effectiveness of trade promotions and clearly identify low and high yield promotions. Thereby budget and resource allocation cannot be done effectively.

          Challenge #5 Lack of tools with powerful analytical capabilities

          Most companies depend on their typical corporate systems like TPM or ERP systems for trade spend analysis. However, trade promotion planning, measurement and optimization require tools with strong analytical capabilities. A majority of existing TPM systems only offer effective control mechanisms.

          Challenge #6 Focus on incorrect metrics

          Even though there is a quick realization that profitability carries more weight than volume, business teams – from field sales to marketing are still focusing on volume. But volume and profitable volume are two entirely different things. Focus on achieving profit should be embedded within every department of the organization.

          Read More: Trade Promotion Optimization: Challanges and How AI Can Help

          Chapter 3

          Must-have capabilities in a Trade Promotion Optimization solution

          The TPO software market is huge and there are numerous vendors who promise a wide-range of features. In this chapter, we’ll explore some important capabilities you must look for while evaluating solutions.

          Must-have capabilities in a Trade Promotion Optimization solution image

          It’s imperative to understand the different steps involved in trade promotion optimization and important capabilities required to effectively execute each step.

          6 key steps of trade promotion optimization

          Underline Data Integration image

          Data integration and harmonization

          Active sales image

          Promotion effectiveness measurement and analysis

          Sales Forcasting image

          Sales
          forecasting

          Promotion Optimization image

          Promotion optimization

          Publishing To Tpm Solution image

          Publishing to TPM solution

          Bussiness Adoption image

          Business Adoption

          1. Data integration and harmonization

          In most CPG companies data is stored in disparate silos, disabling decision-makers to have holistic view of reality. An effective TPO solution should be able to bring together high-quality real-time data from different internal and external sources with no errors. Ideally the solution should also have data cleansing capability to ensure consistent and accurate data.

          To ensure data accuracy, the solution should also be fed with data from multiple influential data sources and market touch points. This combined raw data acts as a strong foundation on which a powerful analysis can be run to glean insights.

          Important data sources your TPO solution should capture

          Underline Different types of data compass captures images

          1. Internal data

          • Market research: Market, consumer and competitor information from analysts.
          • Past promotions: Information on different trade promotions run for different products and their effectiveness.
          • Primary sales: Sales from the manufacturer to distributor/retailer
          • Secondary sales: Sales from the distributor/ retailer to the end customer.
          • Marketing campaigns: Ongoing and future marketing activities that can impact your trade promotion ROI.
          • Point of Sales: The basket of items which a customer buys at a retail outlet
          Read More: POS Data Analysis – How Can Retailers and Consumer Goods Companies Make the Most of it Trade Promotion Optimization: Challanges and How AI Can Help
          Check out our POS Analytics Solutions

          2. External data

          • Syndicated data: Data from Nielsen, IRI, SPINS and other data brokers etc.
          • Weather: Consumer behaviours change based on seasons or environmental factors like flu, pollen etc. and this can impact your sales or trade promotions. The TPO solution should be integrated with past, future and current weather data.

          Read More: How Weather Impacts Retail Sales & How Big Data Analytics Can Help

          Check Out Our Weather Analytics Solution
          • Events: Major events like a famous musician’s performance or a sporting event can alter consumers’ behaviour towards certain type of products (ex: A football event can trigger more sales for a beverage)
          • Digital Media: 
          • 58% of survey respondents rate their capabilities at the intersection of digital and trade promotion as “lagging" Promotion Optimization Institute
          • As digital marketing continue to increase in the consumer goods business, it is essential to learn what consumers are searching for, tweeting about, how they are mentioning your and competitor brand or responding to particular Facebook or Instagram campaign and so on. However this type of data is largely unstructured and generated real-time.

            Traditional TPO solutions miss this vital information. If you are evaluating vendors, ensure their solution captures and harnesses digital data. An ideal TPO solution needs to provide a comprehensive and single window view of all types of data and reports.

          Read More: Our Data Integration Services

          2. Promotion effectiveness measurement and analysis

          The current obstacle to more meaningful post-event analytics is that it largely lacks automation - Promotion Optimization Institute

          Automate Post-Event Analysis

          Post-promotion/event analysis is a key feature of any TPO solution. Lack of automation results in manual compiling of data and over burdening of your field sales teams.

          In a POI research, it is found that only 39% of CG companies have some level of automation in their TPO solution. Automation allows you to see the performance of as many promotions as you want and as often as you want. It also relieves burden on your field teams and eliminates human-error which can occur due to manual data-entry.

          In-depth Insights

          Promotion effectiveness dashboard image

          The solution should display key metrics like growth, sales uplift, ROI, volume, profitability for every promotion and offer the flexibility to view at brand, location, retailer levels.

          Check Out Our Post Promotion Analytics Solutions

          3. Promotion forecasting and planning

          Post-promotion/event analysis is a key feature of any TPO solution. Lack of automation results in manual compiling of data and over burdening of your field sales teams.

          In a POI research, it is found that only 39% of CG companies have some level of automation in their TPO solution. Automation allows you to see the performance of as many promotions as you want and as often as you want. It also relieves burden on your field teams and eliminates human-error which can occur due to manual data-entry.

          4. Promotion optimization

          The solution should be able to optimize trade spend based on the given promotion combinations forecasted and recommend which promotions should be run based on

          a.The constraints defined. eg: budget for a region.

          b.The objectives which need to be achieved i.e either to increase volume or gain market share or increase revenue or increase profit.

          The solution should allow the planner to simulate various promotion scenarios and pick the best scenario based on the sales uplift and profit predicted for various scenarios.

          5. Publishing to TPM solution

          The solution should seamlessly integrate into your existing TPM and ERP systems and allow you to schedule and publish plans to your sales teams.

          6 Business Adoption

          TPO initiatives usually fail because of the required change management. And Business users face challenges with learning to use the solution and getting access to information and data to make better decisions. As a result they go back to the old way of using  custom-built excel sheets to make their decisions . This challenge can be overcome by embedding AI chatbots into the TPO solution.

          Chapter 4

          Artificial Intelligence in Trade Promotion Optimization

          According to Gartner, AI technologies will be in almost every software product by 2020. And TPO systems are no different. Modern trade promotion optimization solutions are leveraging AI to harness data and produce actionable intelligence.

          Artificial Intelligence in Trade Promotion Optimization image

          Traditional analytics like descriptive and diagnostic analytics have always been a part of TPO solutions. While these analytics technologies do provide some key insights, most of them are non-actionable.

          Consumer Goods and Retail businesses produce massive amounts of data every day and an powerful harnessing of this humongous data requires advanced technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

          Advanced analytics like predictive and prescriptive analytics are powered with AI and machine learning and add the much needed “intelligence” part to the TPO software. Unlike traditional analytics which provide shallow insights, Advanced analytics turn data into meaningful insights – insights which are actionable and enable you to take a decision quickly and more accurately.

          Traditional Analytics

          • What happened
          • How Many
          • How Often etc.
          • Why is this happening ?

          Predictive and Prescriptive Analytics

          • What happened
          • How Many
          • How often
          • Why is this happening?
          • What will happen in the future and what should i do about it?
          • Which promotions are delivering the highest ROI and why?
          • What is the lost sales percentage?
          • What is the right promotion mix strategy for the upcoming quarter?
          • How can I maximize my trade promotion ROI?
          • What is my expected ROI if I price Brand A 3 USD more than Brand B for the next 3 months?
          • What are my predicted sales if I keep Brand A at base price for the next 6 months and promote Brand B for a BOGO for the next 1 month?
          • What is the retailer performance in a location for a specific time period and for a specific product?

          Build What-if scenario scenarios

          Advanced analytics allow you to build different virtual promotional scenarios and gives the estimated ROI in each scenario. This estimated ROI is provided based on the harnessing of the data fed to the software. You can build different scenarios by changing different parameters like brand, price, promotion, location, duration etc. and learn the estimated ROI and sales uplift before actually running the promotion.

          Examples

          1. What is my estimated ROI if I run a BOGO for Brand A for 2 months at City B for Price C?
          2. What will be my sales uplift if I offer half price for Brand X and keep Brand Y at base price for the next 1 month?

          Identify trends and patterns in the data

          Advanced analytics leverage machine learning to capture trends in your past promotions and their impact which you might not be aware of. This can include alerting you if there is a dip in sales or if there is an increase in promotion ROI etc. This data discovery helps you take better decisions and run promotions that matter.

          Leverage unstructured data

          Unstructured content already accounts for a staggering 90 percent of all digital data, much of which is locked away across a variety of different data stores, in different locations and in varying formats - IDC

          Data from crucial data sources like digital and social media, TRP, events, POS are largely unstructured and cannot be harnessed by traditional analytics. Big data and AI technologies such as Machine Learning (ML) harness and convert this raw, unstructured data into meaningful insights.

          Get fact-based recommendations and forecasts

          Based on the data fed, advanced analytics provide recommendations and tell you what can be the next best step. You can get crisp prescriptions like “Run promotion A for location B for 1 month to get sales uplift on Y percent”, allowing you to glean insights from the analysis instead of you doing the tedious data analysis process and deciding by yourself.

          Read More: A Quick Guide To Choosing a Trade Promotion Optimization Software

          Chapter 5

          What an AI-Powered Promotion Analysis Looks Like

          Check out the different dashboards of our AI enabled TPO solution - Compass

          AI-Powered Promotion Analysis image

          Measure Trade Promotion Effectiveness

          Cpg promotion effectiveness image

          Compare sales with various parameters

          Compass promotion plan image

          Actual sales vs Predicted
          Sales

          predicted chart image

          Get a 360-degree view on impact of sales

          sales portal dashboard images
          Chapter 6

          Case study

          Acuvate reduces trade promotion spend for a transnational Consumer Goods company by 100k USD

          Case-study images

          About the Company

          Underline

          It is a transnational consumer goods company co-headquartered in Netherlands and London, United Kingdom.

          Its products include several food and beverage, cleaning agents and personal care products. It is the world's largest consumer goods company (measured by 2012 revenue) and the world's largest producer of food spreads.

          It is Europe’s 7th-most valuable company and one of the oldest multinational companies with products across 190 countries.

          1. Business Scenario

          • The Client had a challenge in calculating and monitoring the the Sales Uplift for various promotions being run in the emerging markets.

            The sales and revenue management teams had a promotion calendar which is defined in Excel sheets. The company purchased only the sales and market share data from Nielsen Holdings and don’t have the crucial data of past promotions and pricing.

            This impacted the accuracy in decision-making and teams were unable to analyze

            1. The impact and effectiveness of various promotions on different products.
            2. The sales uplift created by each promotion.

            As a result identifying the right promotion for the right scenario became a challenge.

          2. Solution

          • Acuvate used its domain and technology expertise to meet the client’s requirement. The solution was used for two markets and one category.

            The solution included

            • Extracting data from spreadsheets and integrating the same into a Data Mart
            • Calculating the base sales by comparing periods where Promotions were not present for an SKU
            • Calculating the Sales Uplift and growth for each Promotion

            This solution allowed the sales and revenue management teams to identify

            • Which promotions were creating an uplift and for which specific SKUs.
            • Which SKUs were negatively impacted by the promotions run.

          3. Benefits and Features

          • Using the solution, users were able to

                 a) Identify the Sales Uplift vs Target for each promotion.

                b) Increase sales by getting actionable recommendations on the best promotions to be run and understanding which ones work.

                c) Set alerts if the Sales uplift goes below a specific number.

                d) View dashboards on mobile and ask natural language questions as well to get the needed data.

          ROI

          Underline Reduced image

          Reduced Trade Promotions spend by 100K USD

          Reduced In Manual image

          Reduced In Manual effort by 500 person hours

          Increased Revenue image

          Increased
          revenue

          Faster Decisions image

          Faster decisions through actionable recommendations and analysis

          Chapter 7

          About Compass

          Retail Business Intelligence Solution banner image

          Explore Acuvate’s Trade Promotion Optimization Software, Compass.

          Compass is Acuvate’s Trade Promotion Optimization software which leverages Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and Advanced Analytics. It is created on the primary motto of making data work to get maximum bang for the buck for your trade promotions. Measure, Forecast, Analyze, Optimize and Repeat.

          Key Capability image

          The different features of Compass

          Underline

          High-Quality Data Lake

          1. Capture data from multiple
            external and internal
            sources including digital
            media, weather, events,
            POS, competitor intelligence
            and beyond.
          2. Cleanse the data to remove
            duplicates and also
            effectively organize the
            Same.
          3. Convert Unstructured data
            to structured.

          AI & Machine Learning

          1. Run promotions with an intelligent and convenient analysis of data.
          2. Detect key insights and anomalies in promotional data
          3. Unlike traditional analytics which provides shallow insights, predictive and prescriptive analytics forecast and prescribes the right actions to maximize the ROI of your promotions.
          4. Crucial what-if scenarios will be addressed as well.

          AI Bots & Advanced Visualizations

          1. Simplify the way you consume data from the TPO software with chatbots
          2. See data in the most convenient and visually-rich formats with advanced visualizations

          Solution Benefits & Features

          1. Create customizable reports and dashboards without depending on skilled crew
          2. Easy to use for both power and non-power users

          How Compass Works?

          Underline Fmcg analysis

          Related Articles

          Underline

          Request a Demo

          Underline
      • Weather Analytics
        • Trade Promotion Optimization Software: Everything You Must Know

          Request For Demo Learn more Trade Promotion Optimization Softwares Everything Know Banner Image

          Our Customers Around The World

          Underline Clientsv3 1
          What Is Trade Promotion Optimization image

          Chapter 1

          What is Trade Promotion Optimization

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths And Challenges image

          Chapter 2

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths and Challenges

          Must Have Capabilities In A Trade Promotion Optimization Solution image

          Chapter 3

          Must-have capabilities in a TPO solution

          Artificial Intelligence In Trade Promotion Optimization image

          Chapter 4

          Artificial Intelligence in Trade Promotion Optimization

          What An Ai Powered Promotion Analysis Looks Like image

          Chapter 5

          What an AI-Powered Promotion Analysis Looks Like

          Case Study image

          Chapter 6

          Case-study

          About Compass image

          Chapter 7

          About Compass

          Chapter 1

          What is Trade Promotion Optimization

          This chapter is all about the basics and the current state of CPG trade promotions. It’ll help us get the definitions right before we delve into the actual topic.

          Trade Promotion Optimization

          The Current State of Trade Promotions

          Underline Cpg Trade Promotions

          of CPG trade promotion spending doesn’t drive the desired results

          - Nielsen Holdings

          Trade Promotions

          of the money was lost by most of the manufacturers who invest in trade promotions

          - Booz Allen Hamilton

          Fmcg Trade Promotions

          of trade promotions globally don't break even

          - Nielsen Holdings

          Tpo

          improvement on trade promotion ROI will improve the top line by 10% and operating margins by 3-5%

          - Economic Times Retail

          Even though the trade promotions spend take up a lion’s share of the organizational revenue, traditionally manufacturers have always struggled in optimizing their promotion mix for achieving the maximum bang for the buck. CPG companies typically take a two-step approach to implementing trade promotions – Trade Promotion Optimization and Trade Promotion Management (TPM). Let’s start by establishing the core definitions of both and how they are different from each other.

          Trade Promotion Optimization (TPO): TPO is the process of continuously improving the effectiveness of trade promotion strategies by optimizing them based on your business goals and current supply and promotion constraints. The key objective of TPO is to maximize the value every dollar invested in trade promotions. It follows the famous motto of “Build, Measure, Learn and Repeat”.

          The software which support and enable this entire process is Trade Promotion Optimization Software. These solutions are equipped with a range of predictive modelling, analytics and data harmonization capabilities.

          Trade Promotion Management (TPM): TPM focuses more on the internal execution and operational part of trade promotions. This can include defining new promotions, allocating budgets at various stages for different departments, retail activity management, tracking promotions and managing funds, authorizing payments etc.

          TPM systems lack or have limited forecasting and promotion effectiveness analysis capabilities - things that are critical to profitably optimizing your trade spend
          Chapter 2

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths and Challenges

          Even though many companies recognize the importance of powerful TPO procedure, organizational and technological challenges often limit teams from implementing an effective TPO. In this chapter we will debunk some popular TPO myths and discuss common challenges.

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths and Challenges images

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths

          Underline

          Myth #1 We already have a TPM system in place. We won’t need an additional TPO system

          This is the most common excuse we hear when we talk to CPG companies about their trade promotion challenges. TPM systems are needed to “manage” promotions i.e you can use them to define promotions, track spending or schedule invoices to retailers or any other operational/transactional activities. However, the capabilities of these systems are limited to just planning and execution.

          A majority of TPM solutions can’t integrate data from key influential sources like POS, digital media, weather etc.he post-event analysis and what-if scenario building capabilities are also very limited in most TPM software.

          Always build the trade promotion optimization (TPO) into your trade promotion management approach - Gartner

          Companies should look at choosing a TPO solution which can seamlessly integrate into their existing TPM system. This enables both systems to work in tandem with each other and centralize all your trade promotion activities.

          Read More: 6 Best Practices For Moving From TPM to TPO

          Myth #2 We will face adoption issues from our sales teams

          Any reliable TPO solution should be extremely user-friendly. Advanced visualizations and seamless navigation flows are some key elements to look for while choosing a TPO solution and have elements which will help with better adoption by users.

          In addition, a TPO solution should  automate post-event analysis and data-entry. Without automation, field-sales teams need to manually enter data which is not only unproductive but also prone to human-error. Obtaining  information for better decision making is a huge challenge.

          Integrating AI chatbots with the TPO solution is one another effective way to increase adoption among field-sales personnel. Chatbots simplify the way you interact with data and eliminate the need to switch windows or drill dashboards.

          Read More: 5 Amazing Business Benefits of Data Visualization

          Myth #3 Deploying a new TPO system is both cost and time intensive

          Unlike your typical TPM systems which need a considerable amount of time to go live, TPO systems can be deployed within a few weeks. And while it’s true that these systems can’t really be termed “cost-friendly” but companies need to think about the ROI delivered by these systems.

          Today a mere 15% improvement on Trade Promotion ROI will improve the top line by 10% and operating margins by 3-5%. If you are in the CPG business, you probably must be well aware of the increased competition from local brands in the last decade. And this is most likely to increase further in the coming years.

          In such a scenario, you no longer can afford taking critical business decisions based on gut or partial intelligence or past experiences.

          Success in the CPG industry is largely based on decisions – decisions which are accurate and taken at a lightening speed. While decision-making does depend on several factors, it’s highly important to leverage emerging technologies like TPO solutions which will improve and simplify it.   

          Information is the oil of the 21st century and analysis is the combustion engine - Gartner

          Read More: 5 Trade Promotion Optimization Myths You Need To Stop Believing

          Trade Promotion Optimization Challenges

          Underline

          Challenge # 1 Data Availability

          There are numerous types of data which needs to be considered before devising or optimizing trade promotion strategies. These could include POS data or Syndicated data from data brokers or past promotion data etc. However most companies spend heavily and depend solely on syndicated data for taking decisions.

          Read More: Data Brokers – How Can Consumer Goods Companies Maximize ROI

          While this type of data is important to capture, there are numerous other influential data types which need to be harnessed to increase data accuracy and get a big picture view of reality. Another popular challenge is siloed data. Your POS data remains at one place, syndicated data in another, social media data at some other place. This limits the efficiency and productiveness of decision-makers as they can’t process and analyze data effortlessly.

          Challenge #2 Sole reliance on spreadsheets for data consumption

          Most decision-makers in the CPG business still are reliant on some custom-built spreadsheets for data consumption. Even though many business users are accustomed to using Excel, the lack of flexibility of these sheets decreases the speed and accuracy of decision-making.

          Especially as the amount of data to be processed increases, decision-makers have to spend more time analyzing data and less time gaining insights from it. Also, manual data entry into spreadsheets is very tedious for field-sales teams and prone to human errors.

          Challenge #3 High dependency on IT or MIS teams

          This is another common challenge which disables TPO teams from leveraging data for decision-making. Business teams usually have to depend on highly-skilled crew like IT or MIS personnel or Data Scientists to get new report formats or update the existing ones with the latest data. This is a complicated process and hard to incorporate in the daily work flows of a decision-maker.

          Read More: The 5 major benefits of self-service BI

          Know More About Our Self-Service BI Services

          Challenge #4 Inaccurate post promotion analysis

          Due to the above challenges and various other organization-specific problems, TPO teams cannot powerfully measure the effectiveness of trade promotions and clearly identify low and high yield promotions. Thereby budget and resource allocation cannot be done effectively.

          Challenge #5 Lack of tools with powerful analytical capabilities

          Most companies depend on their typical corporate systems like TPM or ERP systems for trade spend analysis. However, trade promotion planning, measurement and optimization require tools with strong analytical capabilities. A majority of existing TPM systems only offer effective control mechanisms.

          Challenge #6 Focus on incorrect metrics

          Even though there is a quick realization that profitability carries more weight than volume, business teams – from field sales to marketing are still focusing on volume. But volume and profitable volume are two entirely different things. Focus on achieving profit should be embedded within every department of the organization.

          Read More: Trade Promotion Optimization: Challanges and How AI Can Help

          Chapter 3

          Must-have capabilities in a Trade Promotion Optimization solution

          The TPO software market is huge and there are numerous vendors who promise a wide-range of features. In this chapter, we’ll explore some important capabilities you must look for while evaluating solutions.

          Must-have capabilities in a Trade Promotion Optimization solution image

          It’s imperative to understand the different steps involved in trade promotion optimization and important capabilities required to effectively execute each step.

          6 key steps of trade promotion optimization

          Underline Data Integration image

          Data integration and harmonization

          Active sales image

          Promotion effectiveness measurement and analysis

          Sales Forcasting image

          Sales
          forecasting

          Promotion Optimization image

          Promotion optimization

          Publishing To Tpm Solution image

          Publishing to TPM solution

          Bussiness Adoption image

          Business Adoption

          1. Data integration and harmonization

          In most CPG companies data is stored in disparate silos, disabling decision-makers to have holistic view of reality. An effective TPO solution should be able to bring together high-quality real-time data from different internal and external sources with no errors. Ideally the solution should also have data cleansing capability to ensure consistent and accurate data.

          To ensure data accuracy, the solution should also be fed with data from multiple influential data sources and market touch points. This combined raw data acts as a strong foundation on which a powerful analysis can be run to glean insights.

          Important data sources your TPO solution should capture

          Underline Different types of data compass captures images

          1. Internal data

          • Market research: Market, consumer and competitor information from analysts.
          • Past promotions: Information on different trade promotions run for different products and their effectiveness.
          • Primary sales: Sales from the manufacturer to distributor/retailer
          • Secondary sales: Sales from the distributor/ retailer to the end customer.
          • Marketing campaigns: Ongoing and future marketing activities that can impact your trade promotion ROI.
          • Point of Sales: The basket of items which a customer buys at a retail outlet
          Read More: POS Data Analysis – How Can Retailers and Consumer Goods Companies Make the Most of it Trade Promotion Optimization: Challanges and How AI Can Help
          Check out our POS Analytics Solutions

          2. External data

          • Syndicated data: Data from Nielsen, IRI, SPINS and other data brokers etc.
          • Weather: Consumer behaviours change based on seasons or environmental factors like flu, pollen etc. and this can impact your sales or trade promotions. The TPO solution should be integrated with past, future and current weather data.

          Read More: How Weather Impacts Retail Sales & How Big Data Analytics Can Help

          Check Out Our Weather Analytics Solution
          • Events: Major events like a famous musician’s performance or a sporting event can alter consumers’ behaviour towards certain type of products (ex: A football event can trigger more sales for a beverage)
          • Digital Media: 
          • 58% of survey respondents rate their capabilities at the intersection of digital and trade promotion as “lagging" Promotion Optimization Institute
          • As digital marketing continue to increase in the consumer goods business, it is essential to learn what consumers are searching for, tweeting about, how they are mentioning your and competitor brand or responding to particular Facebook or Instagram campaign and so on. However this type of data is largely unstructured and generated real-time.

            Traditional TPO solutions miss this vital information. If you are evaluating vendors, ensure their solution captures and harnesses digital data. An ideal TPO solution needs to provide a comprehensive and single window view of all types of data and reports.

          Read More: Our Data Integration Services

          2. Promotion effectiveness measurement and analysis

          The current obstacle to more meaningful post-event analytics is that it largely lacks automation - Promotion Optimization Institute

          Automate Post-Event Analysis

          Post-promotion/event analysis is a key feature of any TPO solution. Lack of automation results in manual compiling of data and over burdening of your field sales teams.

          In a POI research, it is found that only 39% of CG companies have some level of automation in their TPO solution. Automation allows you to see the performance of as many promotions as you want and as often as you want. It also relieves burden on your field teams and eliminates human-error which can occur due to manual data-entry.

          In-depth Insights

          Promotion effectiveness dashboard image

          The solution should display key metrics like growth, sales uplift, ROI, volume, profitability for every promotion and offer the flexibility to view at brand, location, retailer levels.

          Check Out Our Post Promotion Analytics Solutions

          3. Promotion forecasting and planning

          Post-promotion/event analysis is a key feature of any TPO solution. Lack of automation results in manual compiling of data and over burdening of your field sales teams.

          In a POI research, it is found that only 39% of CG companies have some level of automation in their TPO solution. Automation allows you to see the performance of as many promotions as you want and as often as you want. It also relieves burden on your field teams and eliminates human-error which can occur due to manual data-entry.

          4. Promotion optimization

          The solution should be able to optimize trade spend based on the given promotion combinations forecasted and recommend which promotions should be run based on

          a.The constraints defined. eg: budget for a region.

          b.The objectives which need to be achieved i.e either to increase volume or gain market share or increase revenue or increase profit.

          The solution should allow the planner to simulate various promotion scenarios and pick the best scenario based on the sales uplift and profit predicted for various scenarios.

          5. Publishing to TPM solution

          The solution should seamlessly integrate into your existing TPM and ERP systems and allow you to schedule and publish plans to your sales teams.

          6 Business Adoption

          TPO initiatives usually fail because of the required change management. And Business users face challenges with learning to use the solution and getting access to information and data to make better decisions. As a result they go back to the old way of using  custom-built excel sheets to make their decisions . This challenge can be overcome by embedding AI chatbots into the TPO solution.

          Chapter 4

          Artificial Intelligence in Trade Promotion Optimization

          According to Gartner, AI technologies will be in almost every software product by 2020. And TPO systems are no different. Modern trade promotion optimization solutions are leveraging AI to harness data and produce actionable intelligence.

          Artificial Intelligence in Trade Promotion Optimization image

          Traditional analytics like descriptive and diagnostic analytics have always been a part of TPO solutions. While these analytics technologies do provide some key insights, most of them are non-actionable.

          Consumer Goods and Retail businesses produce massive amounts of data every day and an powerful harnessing of this humongous data requires advanced technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

          Advanced analytics like predictive and prescriptive analytics are powered with AI and machine learning and add the much needed “intelligence” part to the TPO software. Unlike traditional analytics which provide shallow insights, Advanced analytics turn data into meaningful insights – insights which are actionable and enable you to take a decision quickly and more accurately.

          Traditional Analytics

          • What happened
          • How Many
          • How Often etc.
          • Why is this happening ?

          Predictive and Prescriptive Analytics

          • What happened
          • How Many
          • How often
          • Why is this happening?
          • What will happen in the future and what should i do about it?
          • Which promotions are delivering the highest ROI and why?
          • What is the lost sales percentage?
          • What is the right promotion mix strategy for the upcoming quarter?
          • How can I maximize my trade promotion ROI?
          • What is my expected ROI if I price Brand A 3 USD more than Brand B for the next 3 months?
          • What are my predicted sales if I keep Brand A at base price for the next 6 months and promote Brand B for a BOGO for the next 1 month?
          • What is the retailer performance in a location for a specific time period and for a specific product?

          Build What-if scenario scenarios

          Advanced analytics allow you to build different virtual promotional scenarios and gives the estimated ROI in each scenario. This estimated ROI is provided based on the harnessing of the data fed to the software. You can build different scenarios by changing different parameters like brand, price, promotion, location, duration etc. and learn the estimated ROI and sales uplift before actually running the promotion.

          Examples

          1. What is my estimated ROI if I run a BOGO for Brand A for 2 months at City B for Price C?
          2. What will be my sales uplift if I offer half price for Brand X and keep Brand Y at base price for the next 1 month?

          Identify trends and patterns in the data

          Advanced analytics leverage machine learning to capture trends in your past promotions and their impact which you might not be aware of. This can include alerting you if there is a dip in sales or if there is an increase in promotion ROI etc. This data discovery helps you take better decisions and run promotions that matter.

          Leverage unstructured data

          Unstructured content already accounts for a staggering 90 percent of all digital data, much of which is locked away across a variety of different data stores, in different locations and in varying formats - IDC

          Data from crucial data sources like digital and social media, TRP, events, POS are largely unstructured and cannot be harnessed by traditional analytics. Big data and AI technologies such as Machine Learning (ML) harness and convert this raw, unstructured data into meaningful insights.

          Get fact-based recommendations and forecasts

          Based on the data fed, advanced analytics provide recommendations and tell you what can be the next best step. You can get crisp prescriptions like “Run promotion A for location B for 1 month to get sales uplift on Y percent”, allowing you to glean insights from the analysis instead of you doing the tedious data analysis process and deciding by yourself.

          Read More: A Quick Guide To Choosing a Trade Promotion Optimization Software

          Chapter 5

          What an AI-Powered Promotion Analysis Looks Like

          Check out the different dashboards of our AI enabled TPO solution - Compass

          AI-Powered Promotion Analysis image

          Measure Trade Promotion Effectiveness

          Cpg promotion effectiveness image

          Compare sales with various parameters

          Compass promotion plan image

          Actual sales vs Predicted
          Sales

          predicted chart image

          Get a 360-degree view on impact of sales

          sales portal dashboard images
          Chapter 6

          Case study

          Acuvate reduces trade promotion spend for a transnational Consumer Goods company by 100k USD

          Case-study images

          About the Company

          Underline

          It is a transnational consumer goods company co-headquartered in Netherlands and London, United Kingdom.

          Its products include several food and beverage, cleaning agents and personal care products. It is the world's largest consumer goods company (measured by 2012 revenue) and the world's largest producer of food spreads.

          It is Europe’s 7th-most valuable company and one of the oldest multinational companies with products across 190 countries.

          1. Business Scenario

          • The Client had a challenge in calculating and monitoring the the Sales Uplift for various promotions being run in the emerging markets.

            The sales and revenue management teams had a promotion calendar which is defined in Excel sheets. The company purchased only the sales and market share data from Nielsen Holdings and don’t have the crucial data of past promotions and pricing.

            This impacted the accuracy in decision-making and teams were unable to analyze

            1. The impact and effectiveness of various promotions on different products.
            2. The sales uplift created by each promotion.

            As a result identifying the right promotion for the right scenario became a challenge.

          2. Solution

          • Acuvate used its domain and technology expertise to meet the client’s requirement. The solution was used for two markets and one category.

            The solution included

            • Extracting data from spreadsheets and integrating the same into a Data Mart
            • Calculating the base sales by comparing periods where Promotions were not present for an SKU
            • Calculating the Sales Uplift and growth for each Promotion

            This solution allowed the sales and revenue management teams to identify

            • Which promotions were creating an uplift and for which specific SKUs.
            • Which SKUs were negatively impacted by the promotions run.

          3. Benefits and Features

          • Using the solution, users were able to

                 a) Identify the Sales Uplift vs Target for each promotion.

                b) Increase sales by getting actionable recommendations on the best promotions to be run and understanding which ones work.

                c) Set alerts if the Sales uplift goes below a specific number.

                d) View dashboards on mobile and ask natural language questions as well to get the needed data.

          ROI

          Underline Reduced image

          Reduced Trade Promotions spend by 100K USD

          Reduced In Manual image

          Reduced In Manual effort by 500 person hours

          Increased Revenue image

          Increased
          revenue

          Faster Decisions image

          Faster decisions through actionable recommendations and analysis

          Chapter 7

          About Compass

          Retail Business Intelligence Solution banner image

          Explore Acuvate’s Trade Promotion Optimization Software, Compass.

          Compass is Acuvate’s Trade Promotion Optimization software which leverages Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and Advanced Analytics. It is created on the primary motto of making data work to get maximum bang for the buck for your trade promotions. Measure, Forecast, Analyze, Optimize and Repeat.

          Key Capability image

          The different features of Compass

          Underline

          High-Quality Data Lake

          1. Capture data from multiple
            external and internal
            sources including digital
            media, weather, events,
            POS, competitor intelligence
            and beyond.
          2. Cleanse the data to remove
            duplicates and also
            effectively organize the
            Same.
          3. Convert Unstructured data
            to structured.

          AI & Machine Learning

          1. Run promotions with an intelligent and convenient analysis of data.
          2. Detect key insights and anomalies in promotional data
          3. Unlike traditional analytics which provides shallow insights, predictive and prescriptive analytics forecast and prescribes the right actions to maximize the ROI of your promotions.
          4. Crucial what-if scenarios will be addressed as well.

          AI Bots & Advanced Visualizations

          1. Simplify the way you consume data from the TPO software with chatbots
          2. See data in the most convenient and visually-rich formats with advanced visualizations

          Solution Benefits & Features

          1. Create customizable reports and dashboards without depending on skilled crew
          2. Easy to use for both power and non-power users

          How Compass Works?

          Underline Fmcg analysis

          Related Articles

          Underline

          Request a Demo

          Underline
      • Retail Sales Analytics
        • Trade Promotion Optimization Software: Everything You Must Know

          Request For Demo Learn more Trade Promotion Optimization Softwares Everything Know Banner Image

          Our Customers Around The World

          Underline Clientsv3 1
          What Is Trade Promotion Optimization image

          Chapter 1

          What is Trade Promotion Optimization

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths And Challenges image

          Chapter 2

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths and Challenges

          Must Have Capabilities In A Trade Promotion Optimization Solution image

          Chapter 3

          Must-have capabilities in a TPO solution

          Artificial Intelligence In Trade Promotion Optimization image

          Chapter 4

          Artificial Intelligence in Trade Promotion Optimization

          What An Ai Powered Promotion Analysis Looks Like image

          Chapter 5

          What an AI-Powered Promotion Analysis Looks Like

          Case Study image

          Chapter 6

          Case-study

          About Compass image

          Chapter 7

          About Compass

          Chapter 1

          What is Trade Promotion Optimization

          This chapter is all about the basics and the current state of CPG trade promotions. It’ll help us get the definitions right before we delve into the actual topic.

          Trade Promotion Optimization

          The Current State of Trade Promotions

          Underline Cpg Trade Promotions

          of CPG trade promotion spending doesn’t drive the desired results

          - Nielsen Holdings

          Trade Promotions

          of the money was lost by most of the manufacturers who invest in trade promotions

          - Booz Allen Hamilton

          Fmcg Trade Promotions

          of trade promotions globally don't break even

          - Nielsen Holdings

          Tpo

          improvement on trade promotion ROI will improve the top line by 10% and operating margins by 3-5%

          - Economic Times Retail

          Even though the trade promotions spend take up a lion’s share of the organizational revenue, traditionally manufacturers have always struggled in optimizing their promotion mix for achieving the maximum bang for the buck. CPG companies typically take a two-step approach to implementing trade promotions – Trade Promotion Optimization and Trade Promotion Management (TPM). Let’s start by establishing the core definitions of both and how they are different from each other.

          Trade Promotion Optimization (TPO): TPO is the process of continuously improving the effectiveness of trade promotion strategies by optimizing them based on your business goals and current supply and promotion constraints. The key objective of TPO is to maximize the value every dollar invested in trade promotions. It follows the famous motto of “Build, Measure, Learn and Repeat”.

          The software which support and enable this entire process is Trade Promotion Optimization Software. These solutions are equipped with a range of predictive modelling, analytics and data harmonization capabilities.

          Trade Promotion Management (TPM): TPM focuses more on the internal execution and operational part of trade promotions. This can include defining new promotions, allocating budgets at various stages for different departments, retail activity management, tracking promotions and managing funds, authorizing payments etc.

          TPM systems lack or have limited forecasting and promotion effectiveness analysis capabilities - things that are critical to profitably optimizing your trade spend
          Chapter 2

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths and Challenges

          Even though many companies recognize the importance of powerful TPO procedure, organizational and technological challenges often limit teams from implementing an effective TPO. In this chapter we will debunk some popular TPO myths and discuss common challenges.

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths and Challenges images

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths

          Underline

          Myth #1 We already have a TPM system in place. We won’t need an additional TPO system

          This is the most common excuse we hear when we talk to CPG companies about their trade promotion challenges. TPM systems are needed to “manage” promotions i.e you can use them to define promotions, track spending or schedule invoices to retailers or any other operational/transactional activities. However, the capabilities of these systems are limited to just planning and execution.

          A majority of TPM solutions can’t integrate data from key influential sources like POS, digital media, weather etc.he post-event analysis and what-if scenario building capabilities are also very limited in most TPM software.

          Always build the trade promotion optimization (TPO) into your trade promotion management approach - Gartner

          Companies should look at choosing a TPO solution which can seamlessly integrate into their existing TPM system. This enables both systems to work in tandem with each other and centralize all your trade promotion activities.

          Read More: 6 Best Practices For Moving From TPM to TPO

          Myth #2 We will face adoption issues from our sales teams

          Any reliable TPO solution should be extremely user-friendly. Advanced visualizations and seamless navigation flows are some key elements to look for while choosing a TPO solution and have elements which will help with better adoption by users.

          In addition, a TPO solution should  automate post-event analysis and data-entry. Without automation, field-sales teams need to manually enter data which is not only unproductive but also prone to human-error. Obtaining  information for better decision making is a huge challenge.

          Integrating AI chatbots with the TPO solution is one another effective way to increase adoption among field-sales personnel. Chatbots simplify the way you interact with data and eliminate the need to switch windows or drill dashboards.

          Read More: 5 Amazing Business Benefits of Data Visualization

          Myth #3 Deploying a new TPO system is both cost and time intensive

          Unlike your typical TPM systems which need a considerable amount of time to go live, TPO systems can be deployed within a few weeks. And while it’s true that these systems can’t really be termed “cost-friendly” but companies need to think about the ROI delivered by these systems.

          Today a mere 15% improvement on Trade Promotion ROI will improve the top line by 10% and operating margins by 3-5%. If you are in the CPG business, you probably must be well aware of the increased competition from local brands in the last decade. And this is most likely to increase further in the coming years.

          In such a scenario, you no longer can afford taking critical business decisions based on gut or partial intelligence or past experiences.

          Success in the CPG industry is largely based on decisions – decisions which are accurate and taken at a lightening speed. While decision-making does depend on several factors, it’s highly important to leverage emerging technologies like TPO solutions which will improve and simplify it.   

          Information is the oil of the 21st century and analysis is the combustion engine - Gartner

          Read More: 5 Trade Promotion Optimization Myths You Need To Stop Believing

          Trade Promotion Optimization Challenges

          Underline

          Challenge # 1 Data Availability

          There are numerous types of data which needs to be considered before devising or optimizing trade promotion strategies. These could include POS data or Syndicated data from data brokers or past promotion data etc. However most companies spend heavily and depend solely on syndicated data for taking decisions.

          Read More: Data Brokers – How Can Consumer Goods Companies Maximize ROI

          While this type of data is important to capture, there are numerous other influential data types which need to be harnessed to increase data accuracy and get a big picture view of reality. Another popular challenge is siloed data. Your POS data remains at one place, syndicated data in another, social media data at some other place. This limits the efficiency and productiveness of decision-makers as they can’t process and analyze data effortlessly.

          Challenge #2 Sole reliance on spreadsheets for data consumption

          Most decision-makers in the CPG business still are reliant on some custom-built spreadsheets for data consumption. Even though many business users are accustomed to using Excel, the lack of flexibility of these sheets decreases the speed and accuracy of decision-making.

          Especially as the amount of data to be processed increases, decision-makers have to spend more time analyzing data and less time gaining insights from it. Also, manual data entry into spreadsheets is very tedious for field-sales teams and prone to human errors.

          Challenge #3 High dependency on IT or MIS teams

          This is another common challenge which disables TPO teams from leveraging data for decision-making. Business teams usually have to depend on highly-skilled crew like IT or MIS personnel or Data Scientists to get new report formats or update the existing ones with the latest data. This is a complicated process and hard to incorporate in the daily work flows of a decision-maker.

          Read More: The 5 major benefits of self-service BI

          Know More About Our Self-Service BI Services

          Challenge #4 Inaccurate post promotion analysis

          Due to the above challenges and various other organization-specific problems, TPO teams cannot powerfully measure the effectiveness of trade promotions and clearly identify low and high yield promotions. Thereby budget and resource allocation cannot be done effectively.

          Challenge #5 Lack of tools with powerful analytical capabilities

          Most companies depend on their typical corporate systems like TPM or ERP systems for trade spend analysis. However, trade promotion planning, measurement and optimization require tools with strong analytical capabilities. A majority of existing TPM systems only offer effective control mechanisms.

          Challenge #6 Focus on incorrect metrics

          Even though there is a quick realization that profitability carries more weight than volume, business teams – from field sales to marketing are still focusing on volume. But volume and profitable volume are two entirely different things. Focus on achieving profit should be embedded within every department of the organization.

          Read More: Trade Promotion Optimization: Challanges and How AI Can Help

          Chapter 3

          Must-have capabilities in a Trade Promotion Optimization solution

          The TPO software market is huge and there are numerous vendors who promise a wide-range of features. In this chapter, we’ll explore some important capabilities you must look for while evaluating solutions.

          Must-have capabilities in a Trade Promotion Optimization solution image

          It’s imperative to understand the different steps involved in trade promotion optimization and important capabilities required to effectively execute each step.

          6 key steps of trade promotion optimization

          Underline Data Integration image

          Data integration and harmonization

          Active sales image

          Promotion effectiveness measurement and analysis

          Sales Forcasting image

          Sales
          forecasting

          Promotion Optimization image

          Promotion optimization

          Publishing To Tpm Solution image

          Publishing to TPM solution

          Bussiness Adoption image

          Business Adoption

          1. Data integration and harmonization

          In most CPG companies data is stored in disparate silos, disabling decision-makers to have holistic view of reality. An effective TPO solution should be able to bring together high-quality real-time data from different internal and external sources with no errors. Ideally the solution should also have data cleansing capability to ensure consistent and accurate data.

          To ensure data accuracy, the solution should also be fed with data from multiple influential data sources and market touch points. This combined raw data acts as a strong foundation on which a powerful analysis can be run to glean insights.

          Important data sources your TPO solution should capture

          Underline Different types of data compass captures images

          1. Internal data

          • Market research: Market, consumer and competitor information from analysts.
          • Past promotions: Information on different trade promotions run for different products and their effectiveness.
          • Primary sales: Sales from the manufacturer to distributor/retailer
          • Secondary sales: Sales from the distributor/ retailer to the end customer.
          • Marketing campaigns: Ongoing and future marketing activities that can impact your trade promotion ROI.
          • Point of Sales: The basket of items which a customer buys at a retail outlet
          Read More: POS Data Analysis – How Can Retailers and Consumer Goods Companies Make the Most of it Trade Promotion Optimization: Challanges and How AI Can Help
          Check out our POS Analytics Solutions

          2. External data

          • Syndicated data: Data from Nielsen, IRI, SPINS and other data brokers etc.
          • Weather: Consumer behaviours change based on seasons or environmental factors like flu, pollen etc. and this can impact your sales or trade promotions. The TPO solution should be integrated with past, future and current weather data.

          Read More: How Weather Impacts Retail Sales & How Big Data Analytics Can Help

          Check Out Our Weather Analytics Solution
          • Events: Major events like a famous musician’s performance or a sporting event can alter consumers’ behaviour towards certain type of products (ex: A football event can trigger more sales for a beverage)
          • Digital Media: 
          • 58% of survey respondents rate their capabilities at the intersection of digital and trade promotion as “lagging" Promotion Optimization Institute
          • As digital marketing continue to increase in the consumer goods business, it is essential to learn what consumers are searching for, tweeting about, how they are mentioning your and competitor brand or responding to particular Facebook or Instagram campaign and so on. However this type of data is largely unstructured and generated real-time.

            Traditional TPO solutions miss this vital information. If you are evaluating vendors, ensure their solution captures and harnesses digital data. An ideal TPO solution needs to provide a comprehensive and single window view of all types of data and reports.

          Read More: Our Data Integration Services

          2. Promotion effectiveness measurement and analysis

          The current obstacle to more meaningful post-event analytics is that it largely lacks automation - Promotion Optimization Institute

          Automate Post-Event Analysis

          Post-promotion/event analysis is a key feature of any TPO solution. Lack of automation results in manual compiling of data and over burdening of your field sales teams.

          In a POI research, it is found that only 39% of CG companies have some level of automation in their TPO solution. Automation allows you to see the performance of as many promotions as you want and as often as you want. It also relieves burden on your field teams and eliminates human-error which can occur due to manual data-entry.

          In-depth Insights

          Promotion effectiveness dashboard image

          The solution should display key metrics like growth, sales uplift, ROI, volume, profitability for every promotion and offer the flexibility to view at brand, location, retailer levels.

          Check Out Our Post Promotion Analytics Solutions

          3. Promotion forecasting and planning

          Post-promotion/event analysis is a key feature of any TPO solution. Lack of automation results in manual compiling of data and over burdening of your field sales teams.

          In a POI research, it is found that only 39% of CG companies have some level of automation in their TPO solution. Automation allows you to see the performance of as many promotions as you want and as often as you want. It also relieves burden on your field teams and eliminates human-error which can occur due to manual data-entry.

          4. Promotion optimization

          The solution should be able to optimize trade spend based on the given promotion combinations forecasted and recommend which promotions should be run based on

          a.The constraints defined. eg: budget for a region.

          b.The objectives which need to be achieved i.e either to increase volume or gain market share or increase revenue or increase profit.

          The solution should allow the planner to simulate various promotion scenarios and pick the best scenario based on the sales uplift and profit predicted for various scenarios.

          5. Publishing to TPM solution

          The solution should seamlessly integrate into your existing TPM and ERP systems and allow you to schedule and publish plans to your sales teams.

          6 Business Adoption

          TPO initiatives usually fail because of the required change management. And Business users face challenges with learning to use the solution and getting access to information and data to make better decisions. As a result they go back to the old way of using  custom-built excel sheets to make their decisions . This challenge can be overcome by embedding AI chatbots into the TPO solution.

          Chapter 4

          Artificial Intelligence in Trade Promotion Optimization

          According to Gartner, AI technologies will be in almost every software product by 2020. And TPO systems are no different. Modern trade promotion optimization solutions are leveraging AI to harness data and produce actionable intelligence.

          Artificial Intelligence in Trade Promotion Optimization image

          Traditional analytics like descriptive and diagnostic analytics have always been a part of TPO solutions. While these analytics technologies do provide some key insights, most of them are non-actionable.

          Consumer Goods and Retail businesses produce massive amounts of data every day and an powerful harnessing of this humongous data requires advanced technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

          Advanced analytics like predictive and prescriptive analytics are powered with AI and machine learning and add the much needed “intelligence” part to the TPO software. Unlike traditional analytics which provide shallow insights, Advanced analytics turn data into meaningful insights – insights which are actionable and enable you to take a decision quickly and more accurately.

          Traditional Analytics

          • What happened
          • How Many
          • How Often etc.
          • Why is this happening ?

          Predictive and Prescriptive Analytics

          • What happened
          • How Many
          • How often
          • Why is this happening?
          • What will happen in the future and what should i do about it?
          • Which promotions are delivering the highest ROI and why?
          • What is the lost sales percentage?
          • What is the right promotion mix strategy for the upcoming quarter?
          • How can I maximize my trade promotion ROI?
          • What is my expected ROI if I price Brand A 3 USD more than Brand B for the next 3 months?
          • What are my predicted sales if I keep Brand A at base price for the next 6 months and promote Brand B for a BOGO for the next 1 month?
          • What is the retailer performance in a location for a specific time period and for a specific product?

          Build What-if scenario scenarios

          Advanced analytics allow you to build different virtual promotional scenarios and gives the estimated ROI in each scenario. This estimated ROI is provided based on the harnessing of the data fed to the software. You can build different scenarios by changing different parameters like brand, price, promotion, location, duration etc. and learn the estimated ROI and sales uplift before actually running the promotion.

          Examples

          1. What is my estimated ROI if I run a BOGO for Brand A for 2 months at City B for Price C?
          2. What will be my sales uplift if I offer half price for Brand X and keep Brand Y at base price for the next 1 month?

          Identify trends and patterns in the data

          Advanced analytics leverage machine learning to capture trends in your past promotions and their impact which you might not be aware of. This can include alerting you if there is a dip in sales or if there is an increase in promotion ROI etc. This data discovery helps you take better decisions and run promotions that matter.

          Leverage unstructured data

          Unstructured content already accounts for a staggering 90 percent of all digital data, much of which is locked away across a variety of different data stores, in different locations and in varying formats - IDC

          Data from crucial data sources like digital and social media, TRP, events, POS are largely unstructured and cannot be harnessed by traditional analytics. Big data and AI technologies such as Machine Learning (ML) harness and convert this raw, unstructured data into meaningful insights.

          Get fact-based recommendations and forecasts

          Based on the data fed, advanced analytics provide recommendations and tell you what can be the next best step. You can get crisp prescriptions like “Run promotion A for location B for 1 month to get sales uplift on Y percent”, allowing you to glean insights from the analysis instead of you doing the tedious data analysis process and deciding by yourself.

          Read More: A Quick Guide To Choosing a Trade Promotion Optimization Software

          Chapter 5

          What an AI-Powered Promotion Analysis Looks Like

          Check out the different dashboards of our AI enabled TPO solution - Compass

          AI-Powered Promotion Analysis image

          Measure Trade Promotion Effectiveness

          Cpg promotion effectiveness image

          Compare sales with various parameters

          Compass promotion plan image

          Actual sales vs Predicted
          Sales

          predicted chart image

          Get a 360-degree view on impact of sales

          sales portal dashboard images
          Chapter 6

          Case study

          Acuvate reduces trade promotion spend for a transnational Consumer Goods company by 100k USD

          Case-study images

          About the Company

          Underline

          It is a transnational consumer goods company co-headquartered in Netherlands and London, United Kingdom.

          Its products include several food and beverage, cleaning agents and personal care products. It is the world's largest consumer goods company (measured by 2012 revenue) and the world's largest producer of food spreads.

          It is Europe’s 7th-most valuable company and one of the oldest multinational companies with products across 190 countries.

          1. Business Scenario

          • The Client had a challenge in calculating and monitoring the the Sales Uplift for various promotions being run in the emerging markets.

            The sales and revenue management teams had a promotion calendar which is defined in Excel sheets. The company purchased only the sales and market share data from Nielsen Holdings and don’t have the crucial data of past promotions and pricing.

            This impacted the accuracy in decision-making and teams were unable to analyze

            1. The impact and effectiveness of various promotions on different products.
            2. The sales uplift created by each promotion.

            As a result identifying the right promotion for the right scenario became a challenge.

          2. Solution

          • Acuvate used its domain and technology expertise to meet the client’s requirement. The solution was used for two markets and one category.

            The solution included

            • Extracting data from spreadsheets and integrating the same into a Data Mart
            • Calculating the base sales by comparing periods where Promotions were not present for an SKU
            • Calculating the Sales Uplift and growth for each Promotion

            This solution allowed the sales and revenue management teams to identify

            • Which promotions were creating an uplift and for which specific SKUs.
            • Which SKUs were negatively impacted by the promotions run.

          3. Benefits and Features

          • Using the solution, users were able to

                 a) Identify the Sales Uplift vs Target for each promotion.

                b) Increase sales by getting actionable recommendations on the best promotions to be run and understanding which ones work.

                c) Set alerts if the Sales uplift goes below a specific number.

                d) View dashboards on mobile and ask natural language questions as well to get the needed data.

          ROI

          Underline Reduced image

          Reduced Trade Promotions spend by 100K USD

          Reduced In Manual image

          Reduced In Manual effort by 500 person hours

          Increased Revenue image

          Increased
          revenue

          Faster Decisions image

          Faster decisions through actionable recommendations and analysis

          Chapter 7

          About Compass

          Retail Business Intelligence Solution banner image

          Explore Acuvate’s Trade Promotion Optimization Software, Compass.

          Compass is Acuvate’s Trade Promotion Optimization software which leverages Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and Advanced Analytics. It is created on the primary motto of making data work to get maximum bang for the buck for your trade promotions. Measure, Forecast, Analyze, Optimize and Repeat.

          Key Capability image

          The different features of Compass

          Underline

          High-Quality Data Lake

          1. Capture data from multiple
            external and internal
            sources including digital
            media, weather, events,
            POS, competitor intelligence
            and beyond.
          2. Cleanse the data to remove
            duplicates and also
            effectively organize the
            Same.
          3. Convert Unstructured data
            to structured.

          AI & Machine Learning

          1. Run promotions with an intelligent and convenient analysis of data.
          2. Detect key insights and anomalies in promotional data
          3. Unlike traditional analytics which provides shallow insights, predictive and prescriptive analytics forecast and prescribes the right actions to maximize the ROI of your promotions.
          4. Crucial what-if scenarios will be addressed as well.

          AI Bots & Advanced Visualizations

          1. Simplify the way you consume data from the TPO software with chatbots
          2. See data in the most convenient and visually-rich formats with advanced visualizations

          Solution Benefits & Features

          1. Create customizable reports and dashboards without depending on skilled crew
          2. Easy to use for both power and non-power users

          How Compass Works?

          Underline Fmcg analysis

          Related Articles

          Underline

          Request a Demo

          Underline
      • Retail POS Analytics
        • Trade Promotion Optimization Software: Everything You Must Know

          Request For Demo Learn more Trade Promotion Optimization Softwares Everything Know Banner Image

          Our Customers Around The World

          Underline Clientsv3 1
          What Is Trade Promotion Optimization image

          Chapter 1

          What is Trade Promotion Optimization

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths And Challenges image

          Chapter 2

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths and Challenges

          Must Have Capabilities In A Trade Promotion Optimization Solution image

          Chapter 3

          Must-have capabilities in a TPO solution

          Artificial Intelligence In Trade Promotion Optimization image

          Chapter 4

          Artificial Intelligence in Trade Promotion Optimization

          What An Ai Powered Promotion Analysis Looks Like image

          Chapter 5

          What an AI-Powered Promotion Analysis Looks Like

          Case Study image

          Chapter 6

          Case-study

          About Compass image

          Chapter 7

          About Compass

          Chapter 1

          What is Trade Promotion Optimization

          This chapter is all about the basics and the current state of CPG trade promotions. It’ll help us get the definitions right before we delve into the actual topic.

          Trade Promotion Optimization

          The Current State of Trade Promotions

          Underline Cpg Trade Promotions

          of CPG trade promotion spending doesn’t drive the desired results

          - Nielsen Holdings

          Trade Promotions

          of the money was lost by most of the manufacturers who invest in trade promotions

          - Booz Allen Hamilton

          Fmcg Trade Promotions

          of trade promotions globally don't break even

          - Nielsen Holdings

          Tpo

          improvement on trade promotion ROI will improve the top line by 10% and operating margins by 3-5%

          - Economic Times Retail

          Even though the trade promotions spend take up a lion’s share of the organizational revenue, traditionally manufacturers have always struggled in optimizing their promotion mix for achieving the maximum bang for the buck. CPG companies typically take a two-step approach to implementing trade promotions – Trade Promotion Optimization and Trade Promotion Management (TPM). Let’s start by establishing the core definitions of both and how they are different from each other.

          Trade Promotion Optimization (TPO): TPO is the process of continuously improving the effectiveness of trade promotion strategies by optimizing them based on your business goals and current supply and promotion constraints. The key objective of TPO is to maximize the value every dollar invested in trade promotions. It follows the famous motto of “Build, Measure, Learn and Repeat”.

          The software which support and enable this entire process is Trade Promotion Optimization Software. These solutions are equipped with a range of predictive modelling, analytics and data harmonization capabilities.

          Trade Promotion Management (TPM): TPM focuses more on the internal execution and operational part of trade promotions. This can include defining new promotions, allocating budgets at various stages for different departments, retail activity management, tracking promotions and managing funds, authorizing payments etc.

          TPM systems lack or have limited forecasting and promotion effectiveness analysis capabilities - things that are critical to profitably optimizing your trade spend
          Chapter 2

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths and Challenges

          Even though many companies recognize the importance of powerful TPO procedure, organizational and technological challenges often limit teams from implementing an effective TPO. In this chapter we will debunk some popular TPO myths and discuss common challenges.

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths and Challenges images

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths

          Underline

          Myth #1 We already have a TPM system in place. We won’t need an additional TPO system

          This is the most common excuse we hear when we talk to CPG companies about their trade promotion challenges. TPM systems are needed to “manage” promotions i.e you can use them to define promotions, track spending or schedule invoices to retailers or any other operational/transactional activities. However, the capabilities of these systems are limited to just planning and execution.

          A majority of TPM solutions can’t integrate data from key influential sources like POS, digital media, weather etc.he post-event analysis and what-if scenario building capabilities are also very limited in most TPM software.

          Always build the trade promotion optimization (TPO) into your trade promotion management approach - Gartner

          Companies should look at choosing a TPO solution which can seamlessly integrate into their existing TPM system. This enables both systems to work in tandem with each other and centralize all your trade promotion activities.

          Read More: 6 Best Practices For Moving From TPM to TPO

          Myth #2 We will face adoption issues from our sales teams

          Any reliable TPO solution should be extremely user-friendly. Advanced visualizations and seamless navigation flows are some key elements to look for while choosing a TPO solution and have elements which will help with better adoption by users.

          In addition, a TPO solution should  automate post-event analysis and data-entry. Without automation, field-sales teams need to manually enter data which is not only unproductive but also prone to human-error. Obtaining  information for better decision making is a huge challenge.

          Integrating AI chatbots with the TPO solution is one another effective way to increase adoption among field-sales personnel. Chatbots simplify the way you interact with data and eliminate the need to switch windows or drill dashboards.

          Read More: 5 Amazing Business Benefits of Data Visualization

          Myth #3 Deploying a new TPO system is both cost and time intensive

          Unlike your typical TPM systems which need a considerable amount of time to go live, TPO systems can be deployed within a few weeks. And while it’s true that these systems can’t really be termed “cost-friendly” but companies need to think about the ROI delivered by these systems.

          Today a mere 15% improvement on Trade Promotion ROI will improve the top line by 10% and operating margins by 3-5%. If you are in the CPG business, you probably must be well aware of the increased competition from local brands in the last decade. And this is most likely to increase further in the coming years.

          In such a scenario, you no longer can afford taking critical business decisions based on gut or partial intelligence or past experiences.

          Success in the CPG industry is largely based on decisions – decisions which are accurate and taken at a lightening speed. While decision-making does depend on several factors, it’s highly important to leverage emerging technologies like TPO solutions which will improve and simplify it.   

          Information is the oil of the 21st century and analysis is the combustion engine - Gartner

          Read More: 5 Trade Promotion Optimization Myths You Need To Stop Believing

          Trade Promotion Optimization Challenges

          Underline

          Challenge # 1 Data Availability

          There are numerous types of data which needs to be considered before devising or optimizing trade promotion strategies. These could include POS data or Syndicated data from data brokers or past promotion data etc. However most companies spend heavily and depend solely on syndicated data for taking decisions.

          Read More: Data Brokers – How Can Consumer Goods Companies Maximize ROI

          While this type of data is important to capture, there are numerous other influential data types which need to be harnessed to increase data accuracy and get a big picture view of reality. Another popular challenge is siloed data. Your POS data remains at one place, syndicated data in another, social media data at some other place. This limits the efficiency and productiveness of decision-makers as they can’t process and analyze data effortlessly.

          Challenge #2 Sole reliance on spreadsheets for data consumption

          Most decision-makers in the CPG business still are reliant on some custom-built spreadsheets for data consumption. Even though many business users are accustomed to using Excel, the lack of flexibility of these sheets decreases the speed and accuracy of decision-making.

          Especially as the amount of data to be processed increases, decision-makers have to spend more time analyzing data and less time gaining insights from it. Also, manual data entry into spreadsheets is very tedious for field-sales teams and prone to human errors.

          Challenge #3 High dependency on IT or MIS teams

          This is another common challenge which disables TPO teams from leveraging data for decision-making. Business teams usually have to depend on highly-skilled crew like IT or MIS personnel or Data Scientists to get new report formats or update the existing ones with the latest data. This is a complicated process and hard to incorporate in the daily work flows of a decision-maker.

          Read More: The 5 major benefits of self-service BI

          Know More About Our Self-Service BI Services

          Challenge #4 Inaccurate post promotion analysis

          Due to the above challenges and various other organization-specific problems, TPO teams cannot powerfully measure the effectiveness of trade promotions and clearly identify low and high yield promotions. Thereby budget and resource allocation cannot be done effectively.

          Challenge #5 Lack of tools with powerful analytical capabilities

          Most companies depend on their typical corporate systems like TPM or ERP systems for trade spend analysis. However, trade promotion planning, measurement and optimization require tools with strong analytical capabilities. A majority of existing TPM systems only offer effective control mechanisms.

          Challenge #6 Focus on incorrect metrics

          Even though there is a quick realization that profitability carries more weight than volume, business teams – from field sales to marketing are still focusing on volume. But volume and profitable volume are two entirely different things. Focus on achieving profit should be embedded within every department of the organization.

          Read More: Trade Promotion Optimization: Challanges and How AI Can Help

          Chapter 3

          Must-have capabilities in a Trade Promotion Optimization solution

          The TPO software market is huge and there are numerous vendors who promise a wide-range of features. In this chapter, we’ll explore some important capabilities you must look for while evaluating solutions.

          Must-have capabilities in a Trade Promotion Optimization solution image

          It’s imperative to understand the different steps involved in trade promotion optimization and important capabilities required to effectively execute each step.

          6 key steps of trade promotion optimization

          Underline Data Integration image

          Data integration and harmonization

          Active sales image

          Promotion effectiveness measurement and analysis

          Sales Forcasting image

          Sales
          forecasting

          Promotion Optimization image

          Promotion optimization

          Publishing To Tpm Solution image

          Publishing to TPM solution

          Bussiness Adoption image

          Business Adoption

          1. Data integration and harmonization

          In most CPG companies data is stored in disparate silos, disabling decision-makers to have holistic view of reality. An effective TPO solution should be able to bring together high-quality real-time data from different internal and external sources with no errors. Ideally the solution should also have data cleansing capability to ensure consistent and accurate data.

          To ensure data accuracy, the solution should also be fed with data from multiple influential data sources and market touch points. This combined raw data acts as a strong foundation on which a powerful analysis can be run to glean insights.

          Important data sources your TPO solution should capture

          Underline Different types of data compass captures images

          1. Internal data

          • Market research: Market, consumer and competitor information from analysts.
          • Past promotions: Information on different trade promotions run for different products and their effectiveness.
          • Primary sales: Sales from the manufacturer to distributor/retailer
          • Secondary sales: Sales from the distributor/ retailer to the end customer.
          • Marketing campaigns: Ongoing and future marketing activities that can impact your trade promotion ROI.
          • Point of Sales: The basket of items which a customer buys at a retail outlet
          Read More: POS Data Analysis – How Can Retailers and Consumer Goods Companies Make the Most of it Trade Promotion Optimization: Challanges and How AI Can Help
          Check out our POS Analytics Solutions

          2. External data

          • Syndicated data: Data from Nielsen, IRI, SPINS and other data brokers etc.
          • Weather: Consumer behaviours change based on seasons or environmental factors like flu, pollen etc. and this can impact your sales or trade promotions. The TPO solution should be integrated with past, future and current weather data.

          Read More: How Weather Impacts Retail Sales & How Big Data Analytics Can Help

          Check Out Our Weather Analytics Solution
          • Events: Major events like a famous musician’s performance or a sporting event can alter consumers’ behaviour towards certain type of products (ex: A football event can trigger more sales for a beverage)
          • Digital Media: 
          • 58% of survey respondents rate their capabilities at the intersection of digital and trade promotion as “lagging" Promotion Optimization Institute
          • As digital marketing continue to increase in the consumer goods business, it is essential to learn what consumers are searching for, tweeting about, how they are mentioning your and competitor brand or responding to particular Facebook or Instagram campaign and so on. However this type of data is largely unstructured and generated real-time.

            Traditional TPO solutions miss this vital information. If you are evaluating vendors, ensure their solution captures and harnesses digital data. An ideal TPO solution needs to provide a comprehensive and single window view of all types of data and reports.

          Read More: Our Data Integration Services

          2. Promotion effectiveness measurement and analysis

          The current obstacle to more meaningful post-event analytics is that it largely lacks automation - Promotion Optimization Institute

          Automate Post-Event Analysis

          Post-promotion/event analysis is a key feature of any TPO solution. Lack of automation results in manual compiling of data and over burdening of your field sales teams.

          In a POI research, it is found that only 39% of CG companies have some level of automation in their TPO solution. Automation allows you to see the performance of as many promotions as you want and as often as you want. It also relieves burden on your field teams and eliminates human-error which can occur due to manual data-entry.

          In-depth Insights

          Promotion effectiveness dashboard image

          The solution should display key metrics like growth, sales uplift, ROI, volume, profitability for every promotion and offer the flexibility to view at brand, location, retailer levels.

          Check Out Our Post Promotion Analytics Solutions

          3. Promotion forecasting and planning

          Post-promotion/event analysis is a key feature of any TPO solution. Lack of automation results in manual compiling of data and over burdening of your field sales teams.

          In a POI research, it is found that only 39% of CG companies have some level of automation in their TPO solution. Automation allows you to see the performance of as many promotions as you want and as often as you want. It also relieves burden on your field teams and eliminates human-error which can occur due to manual data-entry.

          4. Promotion optimization

          The solution should be able to optimize trade spend based on the given promotion combinations forecasted and recommend which promotions should be run based on

          a.The constraints defined. eg: budget for a region.

          b.The objectives which need to be achieved i.e either to increase volume or gain market share or increase revenue or increase profit.

          The solution should allow the planner to simulate various promotion scenarios and pick the best scenario based on the sales uplift and profit predicted for various scenarios.

          5. Publishing to TPM solution

          The solution should seamlessly integrate into your existing TPM and ERP systems and allow you to schedule and publish plans to your sales teams.

          6 Business Adoption

          TPO initiatives usually fail because of the required change management. And Business users face challenges with learning to use the solution and getting access to information and data to make better decisions. As a result they go back to the old way of using  custom-built excel sheets to make their decisions . This challenge can be overcome by embedding AI chatbots into the TPO solution.

          Chapter 4

          Artificial Intelligence in Trade Promotion Optimization

          According to Gartner, AI technologies will be in almost every software product by 2020. And TPO systems are no different. Modern trade promotion optimization solutions are leveraging AI to harness data and produce actionable intelligence.

          Artificial Intelligence in Trade Promotion Optimization image

          Traditional analytics like descriptive and diagnostic analytics have always been a part of TPO solutions. While these analytics technologies do provide some key insights, most of them are non-actionable.

          Consumer Goods and Retail businesses produce massive amounts of data every day and an powerful harnessing of this humongous data requires advanced technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

          Advanced analytics like predictive and prescriptive analytics are powered with AI and machine learning and add the much needed “intelligence” part to the TPO software. Unlike traditional analytics which provide shallow insights, Advanced analytics turn data into meaningful insights – insights which are actionable and enable you to take a decision quickly and more accurately.

          Traditional Analytics

          • What happened
          • How Many
          • How Often etc.
          • Why is this happening ?

          Predictive and Prescriptive Analytics

          • What happened
          • How Many
          • How often
          • Why is this happening?
          • What will happen in the future and what should i do about it?
          • Which promotions are delivering the highest ROI and why?
          • What is the lost sales percentage?
          • What is the right promotion mix strategy for the upcoming quarter?
          • How can I maximize my trade promotion ROI?
          • What is my expected ROI if I price Brand A 3 USD more than Brand B for the next 3 months?
          • What are my predicted sales if I keep Brand A at base price for the next 6 months and promote Brand B for a BOGO for the next 1 month?
          • What is the retailer performance in a location for a specific time period and for a specific product?

          Build What-if scenario scenarios

          Advanced analytics allow you to build different virtual promotional scenarios and gives the estimated ROI in each scenario. This estimated ROI is provided based on the harnessing of the data fed to the software. You can build different scenarios by changing different parameters like brand, price, promotion, location, duration etc. and learn the estimated ROI and sales uplift before actually running the promotion.

          Examples

          1. What is my estimated ROI if I run a BOGO for Brand A for 2 months at City B for Price C?
          2. What will be my sales uplift if I offer half price for Brand X and keep Brand Y at base price for the next 1 month?

          Identify trends and patterns in the data

          Advanced analytics leverage machine learning to capture trends in your past promotions and their impact which you might not be aware of. This can include alerting you if there is a dip in sales or if there is an increase in promotion ROI etc. This data discovery helps you take better decisions and run promotions that matter.

          Leverage unstructured data

          Unstructured content already accounts for a staggering 90 percent of all digital data, much of which is locked away across a variety of different data stores, in different locations and in varying formats - IDC

          Data from crucial data sources like digital and social media, TRP, events, POS are largely unstructured and cannot be harnessed by traditional analytics. Big data and AI technologies such as Machine Learning (ML) harness and convert this raw, unstructured data into meaningful insights.

          Get fact-based recommendations and forecasts

          Based on the data fed, advanced analytics provide recommendations and tell you what can be the next best step. You can get crisp prescriptions like “Run promotion A for location B for 1 month to get sales uplift on Y percent”, allowing you to glean insights from the analysis instead of you doing the tedious data analysis process and deciding by yourself.

          Read More: A Quick Guide To Choosing a Trade Promotion Optimization Software

          Chapter 5

          What an AI-Powered Promotion Analysis Looks Like

          Check out the different dashboards of our AI enabled TPO solution - Compass

          AI-Powered Promotion Analysis image

          Measure Trade Promotion Effectiveness

          Cpg promotion effectiveness image

          Compare sales with various parameters

          Compass promotion plan image

          Actual sales vs Predicted
          Sales

          predicted chart image

          Get a 360-degree view on impact of sales

          sales portal dashboard images
          Chapter 6

          Case study

          Acuvate reduces trade promotion spend for a transnational Consumer Goods company by 100k USD

          Case-study images

          About the Company

          Underline

          It is a transnational consumer goods company co-headquartered in Netherlands and London, United Kingdom.

          Its products include several food and beverage, cleaning agents and personal care products. It is the world's largest consumer goods company (measured by 2012 revenue) and the world's largest producer of food spreads.

          It is Europe’s 7th-most valuable company and one of the oldest multinational companies with products across 190 countries.

          1. Business Scenario

          • The Client had a challenge in calculating and monitoring the the Sales Uplift for various promotions being run in the emerging markets.

            The sales and revenue management teams had a promotion calendar which is defined in Excel sheets. The company purchased only the sales and market share data from Nielsen Holdings and don’t have the crucial data of past promotions and pricing.

            This impacted the accuracy in decision-making and teams were unable to analyze

            1. The impact and effectiveness of various promotions on different products.
            2. The sales uplift created by each promotion.

            As a result identifying the right promotion for the right scenario became a challenge.

          2. Solution

          • Acuvate used its domain and technology expertise to meet the client’s requirement. The solution was used for two markets and one category.

            The solution included

            • Extracting data from spreadsheets and integrating the same into a Data Mart
            • Calculating the base sales by comparing periods where Promotions were not present for an SKU
            • Calculating the Sales Uplift and growth for each Promotion

            This solution allowed the sales and revenue management teams to identify

            • Which promotions were creating an uplift and for which specific SKUs.
            • Which SKUs were negatively impacted by the promotions run.

          3. Benefits and Features

          • Using the solution, users were able to

                 a) Identify the Sales Uplift vs Target for each promotion.

                b) Increase sales by getting actionable recommendations on the best promotions to be run and understanding which ones work.

                c) Set alerts if the Sales uplift goes below a specific number.

                d) View dashboards on mobile and ask natural language questions as well to get the needed data.

          ROI

          Underline Reduced image

          Reduced Trade Promotions spend by 100K USD

          Reduced In Manual image

          Reduced In Manual effort by 500 person hours

          Increased Revenue image

          Increased
          revenue

          Faster Decisions image

          Faster decisions through actionable recommendations and analysis

          Chapter 7

          About Compass

          Retail Business Intelligence Solution banner image

          Explore Acuvate’s Trade Promotion Optimization Software, Compass.

          Compass is Acuvate’s Trade Promotion Optimization software which leverages Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and Advanced Analytics. It is created on the primary motto of making data work to get maximum bang for the buck for your trade promotions. Measure, Forecast, Analyze, Optimize and Repeat.

          Key Capability image

          The different features of Compass

          Underline

          High-Quality Data Lake

          1. Capture data from multiple
            external and internal
            sources including digital
            media, weather, events,
            POS, competitor intelligence
            and beyond.
          2. Cleanse the data to remove
            duplicates and also
            effectively organize the
            Same.
          3. Convert Unstructured data
            to structured.

          AI & Machine Learning

          1. Run promotions with an intelligent and convenient analysis of data.
          2. Detect key insights and anomalies in promotional data
          3. Unlike traditional analytics which provides shallow insights, predictive and prescriptive analytics forecast and prescribes the right actions to maximize the ROI of your promotions.
          4. Crucial what-if scenarios will be addressed as well.

          AI Bots & Advanced Visualizations

          1. Simplify the way you consume data from the TPO software with chatbots
          2. See data in the most convenient and visually-rich formats with advanced visualizations

          Solution Benefits & Features

          1. Create customizable reports and dashboards without depending on skilled crew
          2. Easy to use for both power and non-power users

          How Compass Works?

          Underline Fmcg analysis

          Related Articles

          Underline

          Request a Demo

          Underline
      • Marketing Analytics
        • Trade Promotion Optimization Software: Everything You Must Know

          Request For Demo Learn more Trade Promotion Optimization Softwares Everything Know Banner Image

          Our Customers Around The World

          Underline Clientsv3 1
          What Is Trade Promotion Optimization image

          Chapter 1

          What is Trade Promotion Optimization

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths And Challenges image

          Chapter 2

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths and Challenges

          Must Have Capabilities In A Trade Promotion Optimization Solution image

          Chapter 3

          Must-have capabilities in a TPO solution

          Artificial Intelligence In Trade Promotion Optimization image

          Chapter 4

          Artificial Intelligence in Trade Promotion Optimization

          What An Ai Powered Promotion Analysis Looks Like image

          Chapter 5

          What an AI-Powered Promotion Analysis Looks Like

          Case Study image

          Chapter 6

          Case-study

          About Compass image

          Chapter 7

          About Compass

          Chapter 1

          What is Trade Promotion Optimization

          This chapter is all about the basics and the current state of CPG trade promotions. It’ll help us get the definitions right before we delve into the actual topic.

          Trade Promotion Optimization

          The Current State of Trade Promotions

          Underline Cpg Trade Promotions

          of CPG trade promotion spending doesn’t drive the desired results

          - Nielsen Holdings

          Trade Promotions

          of the money was lost by most of the manufacturers who invest in trade promotions

          - Booz Allen Hamilton

          Fmcg Trade Promotions

          of trade promotions globally don't break even

          - Nielsen Holdings

          Tpo

          improvement on trade promotion ROI will improve the top line by 10% and operating margins by 3-5%

          - Economic Times Retail

          Even though the trade promotions spend take up a lion’s share of the organizational revenue, traditionally manufacturers have always struggled in optimizing their promotion mix for achieving the maximum bang for the buck. CPG companies typically take a two-step approach to implementing trade promotions – Trade Promotion Optimization and Trade Promotion Management (TPM). Let’s start by establishing the core definitions of both and how they are different from each other.

          Trade Promotion Optimization (TPO): TPO is the process of continuously improving the effectiveness of trade promotion strategies by optimizing them based on your business goals and current supply and promotion constraints. The key objective of TPO is to maximize the value every dollar invested in trade promotions. It follows the famous motto of “Build, Measure, Learn and Repeat”.

          The software which support and enable this entire process is Trade Promotion Optimization Software. These solutions are equipped with a range of predictive modelling, analytics and data harmonization capabilities.

          Trade Promotion Management (TPM): TPM focuses more on the internal execution and operational part of trade promotions. This can include defining new promotions, allocating budgets at various stages for different departments, retail activity management, tracking promotions and managing funds, authorizing payments etc.

          TPM systems lack or have limited forecasting and promotion effectiveness analysis capabilities - things that are critical to profitably optimizing your trade spend
          Chapter 2

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths and Challenges

          Even though many companies recognize the importance of powerful TPO procedure, organizational and technological challenges often limit teams from implementing an effective TPO. In this chapter we will debunk some popular TPO myths and discuss common challenges.

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths and Challenges images

          Trade Promotion Optimization Myths

          Underline

          Myth #1 We already have a TPM system in place. We won’t need an additional TPO system

          This is the most common excuse we hear when we talk to CPG companies about their trade promotion challenges. TPM systems are needed to “manage” promotions i.e you can use them to define promotions, track spending or schedule invoices to retailers or any other operational/transactional activities. However, the capabilities of these systems are limited to just planning and execution.

          A majority of TPM solutions can’t integrate data from key influential sources like POS, digital media, weather etc.he post-event analysis and what-if scenario building capabilities are also very limited in most TPM software.

          Always build the trade promotion optimization (TPO) into your trade promotion management approach - Gartner

          Companies should look at choosing a TPO solution which can seamlessly integrate into their existing TPM system. This enables both systems to work in tandem with each other and centralize all your trade promotion activities.

          Read More: 6 Best Practices For Moving From TPM to TPO

          Myth #2 We will face adoption issues from our sales teams

          Any reliable TPO solution should be extremely user-friendly. Advanced visualizations and seamless navigation flows are some key elements to look for while choosing a TPO solution and have elements which will help with better adoption by users.

          In addition, a TPO solution should  automate post-event analysis and data-entry. Without automation, field-sales teams need to manually enter data which is not only unproductive but also prone to human-error. Obtaining  information for better decision making is a huge challenge.

          Integrating AI chatbots with the TPO solution is one another effective way to increase adoption among field-sales personnel. Chatbots simplify the way you interact with data and eliminate the need to switch windows or drill dashboards.

          Read More: 5 Amazing Business Benefits of Data Visualization

          Myth #3 Deploying a new TPO system is both cost and time intensive

          Unlike your typical TPM systems which need a considerable amount of time to go live, TPO systems can be deployed within a few weeks. And while it’s true that these systems can’t really be termed “cost-friendly” but companies need to think about the ROI delivered by these systems.

          Today a mere 15% improvement on Trade Promotion ROI will improve the top line by 10% and operating margins by 3-5%. If you are in the CPG business, you probably must be well aware of the increased competition from local brands in the last decade. And this is most likely to increase further in the coming years.

          In such a scenario, you no longer can afford taking critical business decisions based on gut or partial intelligence or past experiences.

          Success in the CPG industry is largely based on decisions – decisions which are accurate and taken at a lightening speed. While decision-making does depend on several factors, it’s highly important to leverage emerging technologies like TPO solutions which will improve and simplify it.   

          Information is the oil of the 21st century and analysis is the combustion engine - Gartner

          Read More: 5 Trade Promotion Optimization Myths You Need To Stop Believing

          Trade Promotion Optimization Challenges

          Underline

          Challenge # 1 Data Availability

          There are numerous types of data which needs to be considered before devising or optimizing trade promotion strategies. These could include POS data or Syndicated data from data brokers or past promotion data etc. However most companies spend heavily and depend solely on syndicated data for taking decisions.

          Read More: Data Brokers – How Can Consumer Goods Companies Maximize ROI

          While this type of data is important to capture, there are numerous other influential data types which need to be harnessed to increase data accuracy and get a big picture view of reality. Another popular challenge is siloed data. Your POS data remains at one place, syndicated data in another, social media data at some other place. This limits the efficiency and productiveness of decision-makers as they can’t process and analyze data effortlessly.

          Challenge #2 Sole reliance on spreadsheets for data consumption

          Most decision-makers in the CPG business still are reliant on some custom-built spreadsheets for data consumption. Even though many business users are accustomed to using Excel, the lack of flexibility of these sheets decreases the speed and accuracy of decision-making.

          Especially as the amount of data to be processed increases, decision-makers have to spend more time analyzing data and less time gaining insights from it. Also, manual data entry into spreadsheets is very tedious for field-sales teams and prone to human errors.

          Challenge #3 High dependency on IT or MIS teams

          This is another common challenge which disables TPO teams from leveraging data for decision-making. Business teams usually have to depend on highly-skilled crew like IT or MIS personnel or Data Scientists to get new report formats or update the existing ones with the latest data. This is a complicated process and hard to incorporate in the daily work flows of a decision-maker.

          Read More: The 5 major benefits of self-service BI

          Know More About Our Self-Service BI Services

          Challenge #4 Inaccurate post promotion analysis

          Due to the above challenges and various other organization-specific problems, TPO teams cannot powerfully measure the effectiveness of trade promotions and clearly identify low and high yield promotions. Thereby budget and resource allocation cannot be done effectively.

          Challenge #5 Lack of tools with powerful analytical capabilities

          Most companies depend on their typical corporate systems like TPM or ERP systems for trade spend analysis. However, trade promotion planning, measurement and optimization require tools with strong analytical capabilities. A majority of existing TPM systems only offer effective control mechanisms.

          Challenge #6 Focus on incorrect metrics

          Even though there is a quick realization that profitability carries more weight than volume, business teams – from field sales to marketing are still focusing on volume. But volume and profitable volume are two entirely different things. Focus on achieving profit should be embedded within every department of the organization.

          Read More: Trade Promotion Optimization: Challanges and How AI Can Help

          Chapter 3

          Must-have capabilities in a Trade Promotion Optimization solution

          The TPO software market is huge and there are numerous vendors who promise a wide-range of features. In this chapter, we’ll explore some important capabilities you must look for while evaluating solutions.

          Must-have capabilities in a Trade Promotion Optimization solution image

          It’s imperative to understand the different steps involved in trade promotion optimization and important capabilities required to effectively execute each step.

          6 key steps of trade promotion optimization

          Underline Data Integration image

          Data integration and harmonization

          Active sales image

          Promotion effectiveness measurement and analysis

          Sales Forcasting image

          Sales
          forecasting

          Promotion Optimization image

          Promotion optimization

          Publishing To Tpm Solution image

          Publishing to TPM solution

          Bussiness Adoption image

          Business Adoption

          1. Data integration and harmonization

          In most CPG companies data is stored in disparate silos, disabling decision-makers to have holistic view of reality. An effective TPO solution should be able to bring together high-quality real-time data from different internal and external sources with no errors. Ideally the solution should also have data cleansing capability to ensure consistent and accurate data.

          To ensure data accuracy, the solution should also be fed with data from multiple influential data sources and market touch points. This combined raw data acts as a strong foundation on which a powerful analysis can be run to glean insights.

          Important data sources your TPO solution should capture

          Underline Different types of data compass captures images

          1. Internal data

          • Market research: Market, consumer and competitor information from analysts.
          • Past promotions: Information on different trade promotions run for different products and their effectiveness.
          • Primary sales: Sales from the manufacturer to distributor/retailer
          • Secondary sales: Sales from the distributor/ retailer to the end customer.
          • Marketing campaigns: Ongoing and future marketing activities that can impact your trade promotion ROI.
          • Point of Sales: The basket of items which a customer buys at a retail outlet
          Read More: POS Data Analysis – How Can Retailers and Consumer Goods Companies Make the Most of it Trade Promotion Optimization: Challanges and How AI Can Help
          Check out our POS Analytics Solutions

          2. External data

          • Syndicated data: Data from Nielsen, IRI, SPINS and other data brokers etc.
          • Weather: Consumer behaviours change based on seasons or environmental factors like flu, pollen etc. and this can impact your sales or trade promotions. The TPO solution should be integrated with past, future and current weather data.

          Read More: How Weather Impacts Retail Sales & How Big Data Analytics Can Help

          Check Out Our Weather Analytics Solution
          • Events: Major events like a famous musician’s performance or a sporting event can alter consumers’ behaviour towards certain type of products (ex: A football event can trigger more sales for a beverage)
          • Digital Media: 
          • 58% of survey respondents rate their capabilities at the intersection of digital and trade promotion as “lagging" Promotion Optimization Institute
          • As digital marketing continue to increase in the consumer goods business, it is essential to learn what consumers are searching for, tweeting about, how they are mentioning your and competitor brand or responding to particular Facebook or Instagram campaign and so on. However this type of data is largely unstructured and generated real-time.

            Traditional TPO solutions miss this vital information. If you are evaluating vendors, ensure their solution captures and harnesses digital data. An ideal TPO solution needs to provide a comprehensive and single window view of all types of data and reports.

          Read More: Our Data Integration Services

          2. Promotion effectiveness measurement and analysis

          The current obstacle to more meaningful post-event analytics is that it largely lacks automation - Promotion Optimization Institute

          Automate Post-Event Analysis

          Post-promotion/event analysis is a key feature of any TPO solution. Lack of automation results in manual compiling of data and over burdening of your field sales teams.

          In a POI research, it is found that only 39% of CG companies have some level of automation in their TPO solution. Automation allows you to see the performance of as many promotions as you want and as often as you want. It also relieves burden on your field teams and eliminates human-error which can occur due to manual data-entry.

          In-depth Insights

          Promotion effectiveness dashboard image

          The solution should display key metrics like growth, sales uplift, ROI, volume, profitability for every promotion and offer the flexibility to view at brand, location, retailer levels.

          Check Out Our Post Promotion Analytics Solutions

          3. Promotion forecasting and planning

          Post-promotion/event analysis is a key feature of any TPO solution. Lack of automation results in manual compiling of data and over burdening of your field sales teams.

          In a POI research, it is found that only 39% of CG companies have some level of automation in their TPO solution. Automation allows you to see the performance of as many promotions as you want and as often as you want. It also relieves burden on your field teams and eliminates human-error which can occur due to manual data-entry.

          4. Promotion optimization

          The solution should be able to optimize trade spend based on the given promotion combinations forecasted and recommend which promotions should be run based on

          a.The constraints defined. eg: budget for a region.

          b.The objectives which need to be achieved i.e either to increase volume or gain market share or increase revenue or increase profit.

          The solution should allow the planner to simulate various promotion scenarios and pick the best scenario based on the sales uplift and profit predicted for various scenarios.

          5. Publishing to TPM solution

          The solution should seamlessly integrate into your existing TPM and ERP systems and allow you to schedule and publish plans to your sales teams.

          6 Business Adoption

          TPO initiatives usually fail because of the required change management. And Business users face challenges with learning to use the solution and getting access to information and data to make better decisions. As a result they go back to the old way of using  custom-built excel sheets to make their decisions . This challenge can be overcome by embedding AI chatbots into the TPO solution.

          Chapter 4

          Artificial Intelligence in Trade Promotion Optimization

          According to Gartner, AI technologies will be in almost every software product by 2020. And TPO systems are no different. Modern trade promotion optimization solutions are leveraging AI to harness data and produce actionable intelligence.

          Artificial Intelligence in Trade Promotion Optimization image

          Traditional analytics like descriptive and diagnostic analytics have always been a part of TPO solutions. While these analytics technologies do provide some key insights, most of them are non-actionable.

          Consumer Goods and Retail businesses produce massive amounts of data every day and an powerful harnessing of this humongous data requires advanced technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

          Advanced analytics like predictive and prescriptive analytics are powered with AI and machine learning and add the much needed “intelligence” part to the TPO software. Unlike traditional analytics which provide shallow insights, Advanced analytics turn data into meaningful insights – insights which are actionable and enable you to take a decision quickly and more accurately.

          Traditional Analytics

          • What happened
          • How Many
          • How Often etc.
          • Why is this happening ?

          Predictive and Prescriptive Analytics

          • What happened
          • How Many
          • How often
          • Why is this happening?
          • What will happen in the future and what should i do about it?
          • Which promotions are delivering the highest ROI and why?
          • What is the lost sales percentage?
          • What is the right promotion mix strategy for the upcoming quarter?
          • How can I maximize my trade promotion ROI?
          • What is my expected ROI if I price Brand A 3 USD more than Brand B for the next 3 months?
          • What are my predicted sales if I keep Brand A at base price for the next 6 months and promote Brand B for a BOGO for the next 1 month?
          • What is the retailer performance in a location for a specific time period and for a specific product?

          Build What-if scenario scenarios

          Advanced analytics allow you to build different virtual promotional scenarios and gives the estimated ROI in each scenario. This estimated ROI is provided based on the harnessing of the data fed to the software. You can build different scenarios by changing different parameters like brand, price, promotion, location, duration etc. and learn the estimated ROI and sales uplift before actually running the promotion.

          Examples

          1. What is my estimated ROI if I run a BOGO for Brand A for 2 months at City B for Price C?
          2. What will be my sales uplift if I offer half price for Brand X and keep Brand Y at base price for the next 1 month?

          Identify trends and patterns in the data

          Advanced analytics leverage machine learning to capture trends in your past promotions and their impact which you might not be aware of. This can include alerting you if there is a dip in sales or if there is an increase in promotion ROI etc. This data discovery helps you take better decisions and run promotions that matter.

          Leverage unstructured data

          Unstructured content already accounts for a staggering 90 percent of all digital data, much of which is locked away across a variety of different data stores, in different locations and in varying formats - IDC

          Data from crucial data sources like digital and social media, TRP, events, POS are largely unstructured and cannot be harnessed by traditional analytics. Big data and AI technologies such as Machine Learning (ML) harness and convert this raw, unstructured data into meaningful insights.

          Get fact-based recommendations and forecasts

          Based on the data fed, advanced analytics provide recommendations and tell you what can be the next best step. You can get crisp prescriptions like “Run promotion A for location B for 1 month to get sales uplift on Y percent”, allowing you to glean insights from the analysis instead of you doing the tedious data analysis process and deciding by yourself.

          Read More: A Quick Guide To Choosing a Trade Promotion Optimization Software

          Chapter 5

          What an AI-Powered Promotion Analysis Looks Like

          Check out the different dashboards of our AI enabled TPO solution - Compass

          AI-Powered Promotion Analysis image

          Measure Trade Promotion Effectiveness

          Cpg promotion effectiveness image

          Compare sales with various parameters

          Compass promotion plan image

          Actual sales vs Predicted
          Sales

          predicted chart image

          Get a 360-degree view on impact of sales

          sales portal dashboard images
          Chapter 6

          Case study

          Acuvate reduces trade promotion spend for a transnational Consumer Goods company by 100k USD

          Case-study images

          About the Company

          Underline

          It is a transnational consumer goods company co-headquartered in Netherlands and London, United Kingdom.

          Its products include several food and beverage, cleaning agents and personal care products. It is the world's largest consumer goods company (measured by 2012 revenue) and the world's largest producer of food spreads.

          It is Europe’s 7th-most valuable company and one of the oldest multinational companies with products across 190 countries.

          1. Business Scenario

          • The Client had a challenge in calculating and monitoring the the Sales Uplift for various promotions being run in the emerging markets.

            The sales and revenue management teams had a promotion calendar which is defined in Excel sheets. The company purchased only the sales and market share data from Nielsen Holdings and don’t have the crucial data of past promotions and pricing.

            This impacted the accuracy in decision-making and teams were unable to analyze

            1. The impact and effectiveness of various promotions on different products.
            2. The sales uplift created by each promotion.

            As a result identifying the right promotion for the right scenario became a challenge.

          2. Solution

          • Acuvate used its domain and technology expertise to meet the client’s requirement. The solution was used for two markets and one category.

            The solution included

            • Extracting data from spreadsheets and integrating the same into a Data Mart
            • Calculating the base sales by comparing periods where Promotions were not present for an SKU
            • Calculating the Sales Uplift and growth for each Promotion

            This solution allowed the sales and revenue management teams to identify

            • Which promotions were creating an uplift and for which specific SKUs.
            • Which SKUs were negatively impacted by the promotions run.

          3. Benefits and Features

          • Using the solution, users were able to

                 a) Identify the Sales Uplift vs Target for each promotion.

                b) Increase sales by getting actionable recommendations on the best promotions to be run and understanding which ones work.

                c) Set alerts if the Sales uplift goes below a specific number.

                d) View dashboards on mobile and ask natural language questions as well to get the needed data.

          ROI

          Underline Reduced image

          Reduced Trade Promotions spend by 100K USD

          Reduced In Manual image

          Reduced In Manual effort by 500 person hours

          Increased Revenue image

          Increased
          revenue

          Faster Decisions image

          Faster decisions through actionable recommendations and analysis

          Chapter 7

          About Compass

          Retail Business Intelligence Solution banner image

          Explore Acuvate’s Trade Promotion Optimization Software, Compass.

          Compass is Acuvate’s Trade Promotion Optimization software which leverages Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and Advanced Analytics. It is created on the primary motto of making data work to get maximum bang for the buck for your trade promotions. Measure, Forecast, Analyze, Optimize and Repeat.

          Key Capability image

          The different features of Compass

          Underline

          High-Quality Data Lake

          1. Capture data from multiple
            external and internal
            sources including digital
            media, weather, events,
            POS, competitor intelligence
            and beyond.
          2. Cleanse the data to remove
            duplicates and also
            effectively organize the
            Same.
          3. Convert Unstructured data
            to structured.

          AI & Machine Learning

          1. Run promotions with an intelligent and convenient analysis of data.
          2. Detect key insights and anomalies in promotional data
          3. Unlike traditional analytics which provides shallow insights, predictive and prescriptive analytics forecast and prescribes the right actions to maximize the ROI of your promotions.
          4. Crucial what-if scenarios will be addressed as well.

          AI Bots & Advanced Visualizations

          1. Simplify the way you consume data from the TPO software with chatbots
          2. See data in the most convenient and visually-rich formats with advanced visualizations

          Solution Benefits & Features

          1. Create customizable reports and dashboards without depending on skilled crew
          2. Easy to use for both power and non-power users

          How Compass Works?

          Underline Fmcg analysis

          Related Articles

          Underline

          Request a Demo

          Underline
    • Business Intelligence
      • Trade Promotion Optimization Software: Everything You Must Know

        Request For Demo Learn more Trade Promotion Optimization Softwares Everything Know Banner Image

        Our Customers Around The World

        Underline Clientsv3 1
        What Is Trade Promotion Optimization image

        Chapter 1

        What is Trade Promotion Optimization

        Trade Promotion Optimization Myths And Challenges image

        Chapter 2

        Trade Promotion Optimization Myths and Challenges

        Must Have Capabilities In A Trade Promotion Optimization Solution image

        Chapter 3

        Must-have capabilities in a TPO solution

        Artificial Intelligence In Trade Promotion Optimization image

        Chapter 4

        Artificial Intelligence in Trade Promotion Optimization

        What An Ai Powered Promotion Analysis Looks Like image

        Chapter 5

        What an AI-Powered Promotion Analysis Looks Like

        Case Study image

        Chapter 6

        Case-study

        About Compass image

        Chapter 7

        About Compass

        Chapter 1

        What is Trade Promotion Optimization

        This chapter is all about the basics and the current state of CPG trade promotions. It’ll help us get the definitions right before we delve into the actual topic.

        Trade Promotion Optimization

        The Current State of Trade Promotions

        Underline Cpg Trade Promotions

        of CPG trade promotion spending doesn’t drive the desired results

        - Nielsen Holdings