TRADE PROMOTION

SECTION ONE

SECTION TWO

Five Trade Fund Reports a CFO Can’t Live Without

By Rick Pensa

Not all Trade Promotion Management (TPM) reports are created equal. Highly-accessible analytical reports

designed to accelerate insights and drive profitable decision-making are generating a new competitive

advantage among Consumer Goods (CG) manufacturers.

With the right technology solution, a busy CFO can replace hours of compiling spreadsheet formulas in favor of instant business intelligence. A couple quick clicks can reveal if a promotion turned a profit or if any trade dollars were left on the table. Beyond time savings, fully automated promotional analysis reports arm CFOs with data visualization tools, drill-down forecast capabilities and top line consolidated views of the entire business.

To evaluate trade spend effectiveness and profitability quickly and easily, here are a core set of trade fund reports a CFO simply can’t live without:

Accrual Report: Comparing accruals to the actual expense records generated during the deduction settlement process will enable a CFO to understand how much money is spent on promotional events. A best-in-class accrual report should provide instant insight into all G/L accrual liabilities for a given month by SKU, trade spending fund, G/L account code and account.

 

Promotion Effectiveness Report: Examining uplifts, tactics and return on investment will help CFOs identify the underlying trends behind under and over-performing trade promotions. A promotion effectiveness report provides insight into the true cost of volume increases as well as the cost per unit. Finally, the CFO can understand “why” a promotion was deemed successful (or not).

Account Profitability Report: Viewing profitability by broker, territory, account and product level is a CFO’s dream. A superior account profitability report will enable a CG company to analyze profits across various hierarchies to pinpoint weak links, better understand key strengths and identify new opportunities.

Promotion Settlement Report: Gaining visibility into the actual settlements paid against each promotional event provides a clear line of sight to the dollar amount spent and the number of events that took place. This report also allows a CFO to understand and track which funds were utilized to settle each promotional event.

Tactic Settlements Recap Report: Reviewing actual spending, sales volume and profitability against various tactic types such as features, displays, TPRs, in-store demonstrations and even unsaleables equips a CFO with the foresight to analyze profits being generated by each tactic.  This knowledge will help the CFO, and the sales team, determine which promotional strategies are building sales and profitability and which tactics are not.

 

Rick Pensa is President/CEO of CPGToolBox, a provider of TPM solutions.

Click on the LinkedIn logo to join the new Shopper Technology Institute Discussion Group

SECTION THREE