Is Salesforce Trade Promotion Management (TPM) Right for You?

Estimated 3 min. read

Trade Promotion Management Today

As we are midway through the year, the Consumer Goods industry continues to confront economic challenges. Supply chain and customer demand continue to be volatile as consumers are making buying decisions based on what they can afford versus what they want. As these issues extend, competition in the industry will only increase. Digital Transformation is now no longer seen as an option but as a necessity. As Salesforce recently stated, customers expect fast, digital, and on-demand experiences or they will take their business elsewhere. Leaders across the country are focusing on efficient growth, cost savings, and increased productivity. In our last blog, we mentioned that Trade Promotion Management was one of three investments that were prioritized for CG leaders during 2020. Managing and optimizing trade spending is vital to driving profitable growth in today’s economy.

What is your ROI from Trade Promotions?

One of the most relevant issues facing brands right now is how they are managing and optimizing trade promotions. According to Mckinsey, CPG companies worldwide invest about 20% of their revenue annually in trade promotions. Stunningly, 59% lost money (72% in the US). Clearly, there is a huge opportunity for both CPG manufacturers and retailers to improve ROI on their TPM investment. If CPG leaders want to focus on growth, cost savings, and increased productivity, the current systems being utilized are not working just to break even.

Some companies are managing their Trade Promotion on homegrown systems, which is associated with risks such as limited knowledge, internal integration problems, and future enhancements. At the end of the day, whether you use a homegrown system or not, can you accurately measure ROI from trade promotions? If you can’t, then it’s time to start thinking about moving to a digital and unified platform.

Salesforce Trade Promotion Management

Salesforce recently released its Consumer Goods Cloud Retail Execution solution, Trade Promotion Management, to help the consumer goods industry drive revenue growth and collaborate across teams on one connected platform. Having a centralized system that supports integrations with ERP, POS, and other data sources is critical. Salesforce TPM helps accelerate the monitoring of key metrics and improve ROI and forecasting in real time. Salesforce Post-event analysis allows brands to conduct an analysis to determine the ROI achieved for individual activities, contracts, programs, and account plans. If you are managing more than $30 million in TPM funds, you should be looking into Salesforce’s TPM solution.

If you would like to learn more about Salesforce TPM or Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud please contact us.

Learn More about Salesforce Trade Promotion Management

Consumer Goods Cloud Consultant Leader

Over the years, we have been using our experience to help digitally transform the consumer goods industry. As our main industry focus, we are proud to be on the Consumer Goods Cloud Partner Advisory Board, in addition to being the exclusive US launch partner of the Salesforce Trade Promotion Management (TPM) Pilot.

About Corrao Group

Since 2002, we have been helping B2B organizations of all sizes optimize their business processes with Salesforce and their third-party applications. As everyday Salesforce power users, Corrao Group understands how flexible the Salesforce platform is to support every business department. We’ve worked with nearly 1,050+ customers, implementing, customizing, and optimizing over 2,150+ Salesforce projects. If you are interest d in learning more about how Corrao Group can help your company, read our reviews on G2!

Consumer Goods Cloud Trade Promotion Management: Key Features

Estimated 2 min. read

Managing and optimizing trade spending is vital to driving profitable growth as the consumer goods industry faces a host of challenges. Salesforce’s latest solution, Trade Promotion Management (TPM) is now generally available on Salesforce to help brands manage and optimize trade programs on one unified platform.

Key capabilities of Salesforce TPM include strategic planning, funds management, account planning, promotion planning, promotion execution, joint business plans, and post-event analytics. Learn other key features below.

Salesforce Trade Promotion Management: Top Features

Scenario Planning

    • Analyze Year-to-Date results with projected promotions to strengthen your business cases for trade promotions.

Real-Time Calculation

    • Calculate promotion measures as well as their impact on account plans on the fly without requiring a save action.

BOM Support in Promotions

    • Plan Bill of Materials in Promotions and send conditions on header or component level.

Customer Business Planning

    • Enable customer business planning for a single account and one or multiple categories.

Simple Promotion Creation

    • Provides a configurable simple promotion creation wizard for better user experience and ease of use.

Flexible Condition Search & Generation

    • Search pricing conditions across product and customer hierarchies traversing specific to generic as well as generate conditions on flexible levels.

KPI Configurability

    • Easy to configure key performance indicators for all TPM business processes.

Rate-Based Funding

    • User-friendly way to support live rate funding for key accounts.

Funds & Claims Management

    • Provides account managers with clear visibility to trade budgets and accrued liabilities. This allows them to verify available funding to support their trade plans and match claims with payment once the promotion has finished.

Real-Time Reporting

    • Flexible views on all TPM relevant data (e.g. account plans, promotions) based on the various user persona needs.

Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud Consultant Leader

Over the years, we have been using our experience to help digitally transform the consumer goods industry. As our main industry focus, we are proud to be on the Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud Partner Advisory Board, in addition to being the exclusive US launch partner of the Salesforce TPM Pilot.

About Corrao Group

Since 2002, we have been helping B2B organizations of all sizes optimize their business processes with Salesforce and their third-party applications. As everyday Salesforce power users, Corrao Group understands how flexible the Salesforce platform is to support every business department. We’ve worked with nearly 1,050+ customers, implementing, customizing, and optimizing over 2,150+ Salesforce projects. If you are interest d in learning more about how Corrao Group can help your company, read our reviews on G2!

Manage Trade Programs Across the Entire Cycle with Salesforce TPM

Estimated 2 min. read

The Consumer Goods industry is undergoing a massive digital transformation. According to Salesforce, 99% of Consumer Goods companies accelerated digital transformation in the B2B Route to Market when COVID-19 hit in 2020. In the same report, 86% of CG leaders agreed that they would not have been successful without digital investments across multiple functions like Account Management, Retail and Field Execution, and B2B Digital Commerce. Trade Promotion Management (TPM) was one of three investments that were prioritized for CG leaders during 2020.

The need for a consolidated platform

Consumer Goods companies spend on average 20% of their annual revenue on trade promotions throughout the year. Salesforce found alarming statistics that further proved the need for their latest innovation, TPM:

    • 72% of promotions fail to break even.
    • 60% of promotions go unevaluated due to a lack of analytical rigor and manpower.
    • 58% of business users in a survey believe existing solutions are only somewhat effective at revenue management.
    • 71% of customers use spreadsheets for trade promotion management.

Salesforce TPM allows you to take complete control over your trade promotions to manage trade processes across the entire cycle. As a manufacturer, you are working with the retailers to help drive profitable growth by placing the right promotion activities in the stores where the consumers are buying your goods. Ultimately that is the end goal, but it happens at multiple levels across your entire organization. Starting from Strategic Planning all the way through Reporting, here’s how Salesforce TPM helps you across your trade promotion cycle:

Salesforce Trade Promotion Management Process

Consumer Goods Cloud Consultant Leader

Over the years, we have been using our experience to help digitally transform the consumer goods industry. As our main industry focus, we are proud to be on the Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud Board, in addition to being the exclusive US launch partner of the Salesforce Trade Promotion Management (TPM) Pilot.

About Corrao Group

Since 2002, we have been helping B2B organizations of all sizes optimize their business processes with Salesforce and their third-party applications. As everyday Salesforce power users, Corrao Group understands how flexible the Salesforce platform is to support every business department. We’ve worked with nearly 1,050+ customers, implementing, customizing, and optimizing over 2,150+ Salesforce projects. If you are interest d in learning more about how Corrao Group can help your company, read our reviews on G2!

Optimize Trade Promotions with Salesforce TPM

Estimated 2 min. read

Salesforce TPM Unlocks Data-Driven Insights

Trade promotions that are well executed may significantly boost consumer demand for a company’s goods in retail stores. These trade campaigns, however, frequently fail due to outdated processes and technology.

These planning inefficiencies have a variety of causes. Account managers don’t have enough time to plan and execute effective trade promotions. Even then, planning can be siloed between different spreadsheets, accounts, homegrown systems, and brands.

Additionally, account managers often replicate the same promotion from the year without assessing and optimizing new promotions. Add on the tedious and sometimes disconnected process of reconciling payments from previous campaigns; it’s no wonder why brands’ TPM campaigns continually fail.

So what are the solutions to making trade promotions more effective? Salesforce Trade Promotion Management (TPM) and Data.

Here’s how Salesforce TPM allows brands to use data-driven insights to optimize and maximize their trade promotions.

Trade Promotions Today

According to Salesforce, 72% of promotions won’t break even. On top of that, 60% of businesses rely on spreadsheet-driven processes that don’t use real-time data, don’t connect with AI-driven analysis, and are difficult to manipulate at the account level.

Managing your accounts and revenue on one unified and connected platform benefits your trade promotions by:

    • Providing a library of promotions that enable dynamic funding
    • Accurate reporting with real-time data
      • Monitor and act on trade promotions across your entire platform
      • Improved visibility into spending and ROI
    • Faster promotion creation
    • Time-Saving Account Plans

Brands can realize these benefits by implementing the Salesforce Trade Promotion strategies below.

Salesforce Trade Promotion Calendar

Salesforce’s Trade Promotion Calendar allows you to plan the customer account with a simplified interface that minimizes data entry. You can view essential aspects of your account plan with adaptable views by user persona. Salesforce trade calendars can include all types of promotion events like discounts, coupons and rebates, demonstrations, trade promotion events, and trade shows.

With a live spreadsheet P&L, brands can view the performance of KPIs with enterprise visibility to identify holes in their trade plan for maximum ROI and book your calendar with the most effective trade promotions.

Post Event Analysis

Only 9.5% of companies are able to monitor promotions in-flight and reallocate ineffective investments. Salesforce Post-event analysis allows brands to conduct an analysis to determine the ROI achieved for individual activities, contracts, programs, and account plans. Gain powerful insights into your promotions to see how they performed vs. expectations.

Post event analysis from Salesforce TPM allows brands to have:

    • KPI P&L Analysis
    • Promotion & Tactic Reports
    • Account Reports
    • Flexible KPI Exports

Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud Consultant Leader

Over the years, we have been using our experience to help digitally transform the consumer goods industry. As our main industry focus, we are proud to be on the Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud Partner Advisory Board, in addition to being the exclusive US launch partner of the Salesforce TPM Pilot.

About Corrao Group

Since 2002, we have been helping B2B organizations of all sizes optimize their business processes with Salesforce and their third-party applications. As everyday Salesforce power users, Corrao Group understands how flexible the Salesforce platform is to support every business department. We’ve worked with nearly 1,050+ customers, implementing, customizing, and optimizing over 2,150+ Salesforce projects. If you are interest d in learning more about how Corrao Group can help your company, read our reviews on G2!

Salesforce for Consumer Goods Announces New Innovations

Estimated 2 min. read

Salesforce has announced new innovations for the consumer goods industry that allows them to increase automation, expand selling opportunities, drive profitable growth, and more. As the consumer goods industry faces difficult challenges, it’s becoming critical for brands to shift to a digital and consolidated platform for business growth. Salesforce for consumer goods has announced the following innovations: Trade Promotion Management (TPM), Offline Penny Perfect Pricing, B2B Commerce & Marketplace, and MuleSoft Accelerator for Consumer Goods.

Trade Promotion Management

Salesforce Trade Promotion Management allows you to optimize retail pricing and promotions in real-time to maximize trading effectiveness. Manage reconciliation of claims and deductions against promotions and funds while streamlining settlements. Track the effectiveness of your promotions with real-time reporting. Learn more about how Salesforce TPM can optimize trade activity to drive revenue growth on a connected platform.

We had the honor of being one of seven global consulting partners exclusively chosen to participate in Salesforce’s Trade Promotion Management Pilot program this year. We partnered with a leading sports drink company to set up, run, and manage their promotions. Learn more about the pilot here.

Offline Penny-Perfect Pricing

Offline Penny-Perfect Pricing allows Sales representatives to take/place orders fully offline or anywhere with offline ordering— while promotion-driven orders help sales teams up-sell. Seamlessly calculate the penny-perfect price based on available promotions, flexible rules, and pricing conditions. Penny-perfect pricing ensures the price is consistent regardless of device, location, or internet connectivity.

B2B Commerce Wholesale Retail App

The new B2B Commerce Wholesale Retail App maximizes wholesale buying efficiency for consumer goods companies with sales collaboration, large cart ordering, and new virtual showrooms. The new Commerce Marketplace unites the fragmented buyer and seller landscape to create new revenue streams, giving brands and distributors the ability to expand reach by adding inventory to retail partners quickly.

MuleSoft Accelerator for Consumer Goods

Connecting critical data, systems, and applications like trade promotion management, product information management systems, and more will help you innovate faster. Mulsesoft Accelerator for Consumer Goods, companies can have a single source of truth for data and can quickly deploy trade and retail execution capabilities leveraging existing master data in traditional back-end systems.

About Corrao Group

Since 2002, we have been helping B2B organizations of all sizes optimize their business processes with Salesforce and their third-party applications. As everyday Salesforce power users, Corrao Group understands how flexible the Salesforce platform is to support every business department. We’ve worked with nearly 1,050+ customers, implementing, customizing, and optimizing over 2,150+ Salesforce projects. If you are interest d in learning more about how Corrao Group can help your company, read our reviews on G2!

Sources:

Salesforce

Launch Partner for Consumer Goods Cloud TPM Pilot

Estimated 2 min. read

We are excited to announce that we’ve been selected as the exclusive US launch partner supporting Customer 360 for Consumer Goods with Trade Promotion Management (TPM)! Over the past two months, we have been working with Salesforce and a top American Sports Drink Company on their extensive trade promotion program. We learned first-hand that Salesforce TPM can optimize trade planning, track effectiveness with real-time reporting, manage funds and budgets, and streamline claims management. Throughout the engagement, we have found key insights into Salesforce’s latest product:

Business Validation of Salesforce TPM

    • Current disconnected systems don’t allow for ROI monitoring of Trade Promotion Funding, i.e. to time and resource-intensive.
    • Large teams of resources are involved in the Promotion Funding reconciliation.
    • Few companies actually have accurate, if any, ROI reporting!
    • Having a centralized system that supports integrations with ERP, POS, and other data sources will be critical to accelerate monitoring key metrics and improving ROI and forecasting.

Salesforce TPM Pilot

    • The solution provides scalability to managing large TPM programs with reduced resources.
    • The ability to easy clone Trade Promotions for future years will be a game-changer in the reduction of resources.
    • UI supports the Promotion KPI performance while also allowing for granular details with a few clicks.
    • KPI setup process provides real-time visibility for planning and active promotion.
    • The Scenario Planning feature is a game-changer for analyzing Year-to-Date results with projected promotions. This feature is also available for updating the balance of the year to optimal ROI.

If you would like to learn more about Consumer Goods Cloud TPM or the TPM pilot, please visit our website or email us at tkeil@corraogroup.com.

Consumer Goods Cloud Consultant Leader

Over the years, we have been using our experience to help digitally transform the consumer goods industry. As our main industry focus, we are proud to be on the Consumer Goods Cloud Partner Advisory Board.

About Corrao Group

Since 2002, we have been helping B2B organizations of all sizes optimize their business processes with Salesforce and their third-party applications. As everyday Salesforce power users, Corrao Group understands how flexible the Salesforce platform is to support every business department. We’ve worked with nearly 1,050+ customers, implementing, customizing, and optimizing over 2,150+ Salesforce projects. If you are interest d in learning more about how Corrao Group can help your company, read our reviews on G2!

Salesforce Announces Customer 360 for Consumer Goods with Trade Promotion Management

Estimated 2 min. read

Salesforce has announced Customer 360 for Consumer Goods with Trade Promotion Management. Customer 360 for Consumer Goods delivers profitable growth as companies can increase profitability, win at the shelf, build brand relevance, and work efficiently from anywhere. With one single source of truth, Customer 360 for Consumer Goods gives you an intelligent and robust solution to help manage key accounts, deliver profitable growth, and accelerate time to value across your entire organization.

Salesforce Trade Promotion Management allows you to optimize retail pricing and promotions in real-time to maximize trading effectiveness. Salesforce TPM gives your team the resources they need to plan, manage, and execute relationships with distributors, customers, and end-consumer marketing on a consolidated and integrated platform. With Trade Promotion Management digitized, your brand can optimize trade planning, track effectiveness with real-time reporting, manage funds and budgets, and streamline claims management. To learn more about Salesforce Trade Promotion Management, visit our blog: Digitize, Unify, and Integrate Your Trade Promotion Management with Salesforce

We are excited to announce that we’ve been selected as the exclusive US launch partner supporting Customer 360 for Consumer Goods with Trade Promotion Management! Over the past two months, we have been working with Salesforce and a top American Sports Drink Company on their extensive trade promotion program. To learn more about the TPM pilot, please visit our blog: Launch Partner for Consumer Goods Cloud TPM Pilot.

Salesforce TPM Features

To learn more about Salesforce TPM, please visit our website.

Consumer Goods Cloud Consultant Leader

Over the years, we have been using our experience to help digitally transform the consumer goods industry. As our main industry focus, we are proud to be on the Consumer Goods Cloud Partner Advisory Board, in addition to being the exclusive US launch partner of the Salesforce Trade Promotion Management (TPM) Pilot.

About Corrao Group

Since 2002, we have been helping B2B organizations of all sizes optimize their business processes with Salesforce and their third-party applications. As everyday Salesforce power users, Corrao Group understands how flexible the Salesforce platform is to support every business department. We’ve worked with nearly 1,050+ customers, implementing, customizing, and optimizing over 2,150+ Salesforce projects. If you are interest d in learning more about how Corrao Group can help your company, read our reviews on G2!

Digitize, Unify, and Integrate Your Trade Promotion Management with Salesforce

Estimated 3 min. read

Grow Revenue With Salesforce TPM

Consumer Goods companies have been starting to transform a critical aspect of their business, Trade Promotion Management (TPM). According to Salesforce, 60% of companies rely on spreadsheet-driven processes that don’t use real-time data, don’t connect with AI-driven analysis, and are difficult to manipulate at the account level.

In today’s competitive market, brands need a modern way to manage their trade spending related to planning and ultimately ROI. Account managers need the tools to thoroughly plan their trade spending, assess their performance in real-time, and collaborate with cross-functional teams to identify the best ongoing approach and strategy.

Salesforce TPM allows you to take complete control over your trade promotions, allowing you to analyze promotion performance across customers, within customers, SKU, on-brand, and more to fully understand your performance and make crucial changes for maximum ROI.

Why Companies are Moving to a Unified Platform

With cross-departmental planning, consumer goods companies and retailers can target investments at the store and channel level. Omni-channel selling has made the route to market more complex as companies are now engaging with multiple partners across in-person and virtual teams.

Traditional CG models utilize spreadsheets or homegrown systems to track, report, and analyze all promotions across multiple partners. Using a spreadsheet to track promotions does not support real-time collaboration and accurate ROI. Manual processes take away from selling and analyzing, making it impossible to identify what’s working and what isn’t in real-time. Here are four reasons why CG companies are shifting to a consolidated TPM platform.

Route to Market is Getting Complicated

    • Companies today need to be able to target and create different promotions with multiple omnichannel retailers based on channel, region, and store buy-level. It becomes impossible to track and manage various promotions in spreadsheets or homegrown systems without real-time TPM data.

Manual Tracking

    • Utilizing Spreadsheets and homegrown systems to track promotions is hurting your company. Working on spreadsheets is cumbersome, inhibits collaboration with file permissions, and is prone to be inaccurate.

Accruals and delays in reporting can result in P&L issues

    • According to Salesforce, 60% of trade promotions go unevaluated due to a lack of analytical rigor and staffing. CG companies utilizing spreadsheets deal with P&L issues as they fail to learn which promotions bring in the best revenue vs which don’t. Analyzing trade spend efficiency becomes difficult to manage without real-time data, as reconciliation occurs in the following quarters. You need the ability to pivot or quickly scale based on promotion performance.

No Ability to Clone/Replicate Successful Promotions

    • After completing a successful promotion, wouldn’t it be nice to clone or replicate the same promotion in less than 2 minutes? Account Managers are spending way too many hours reinventing the wheel of successful promotions when they could be focused more on developing strategies and relationships for more profit growth.

Salesforce Trade Promotion Management (TPM)

58% of business users do not have the real-time data and analytical tools to thoroughly evaluate the effectiveness of their trade fund programs (Salesforce). Salesforce TPM can help you improve revenue growth by optimizing trade activity on a consolidated and integrated platform. Investigate promotion performance across customers, within customers, on-brand, SKU, the event level, and overall performance.

With one single source of truth, Salesforce TPM gives your team the resources they need to plan, manage, and execute relationships with distributors, customers, and end-consumer marketing. Here are the ways Salesforce is helping businesses create a digitized, unified, and integrated TPM platform.

Maximize Trade Spend Effectiveness

    • Plan the customer account with a simplified interface that minimizes data entry.
    • View essential aspects of your account plan with adaptable views by user persona.
    • Identify holes in your trade plan with a comprehensive trade calendar.
    • View performance of KPIs with enterprise visibility and live spreadsheet-like P&L.

Deepen Trade Promotion Analytics

    • Increase trade spend efficiency with post-event analytics and visualization of performance metrics.
    • Identify and effortlessly clone successful promotions.
    • Compare planned uplift vs actuals with sell-in and consumption data.

Manage Funds and Claims

    • Deposit, transfer, or adjust funds and monitor budgets to evade overspends.
    • Review budgets within a single or consolidated checkbook view.
    • Manage reconciliation of claims and deductions against promotions and funds while streamlining settlements.

Strengthen Cross-Functional Alignment

    • Collaborate with marketing, field sales, and finance on a single platform to better manage 360-degree support plans.
    • Find optimal account or promotional plans with scenario planning and real-time performance comparison.
    • Share promotion details to gain alignment from internal stakeholders and retail partners.

If you would like to learn more about Salesforce’s Trade Promotion Management (TPM), please contact us!

Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud Consultant Leader

Over the years, we have been using our experience to help digitally transform the consumer goods industry. As our main industry focus, we are proud to be on the Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud Partner Advisory Board, in addition to being the exclusive US launch partner of the TPM Salesforce Pilot.

About Corrao Group

Since 2002, we have been helping B2B organizations of all sizes optimize their business processes with Salesforce and their third-party applications. As everyday Salesforce power users, Corrao Group understands how flexible the Salesforce platform is to support every business department. We’ve worked with nearly 1,050+ customers, implementing, customizing, and optimizing over 2,150+ Salesforce projects. If you are interest d in learning more about how Corrao Group can help your company, read our reviews on G2!

Sources 

Salesforce Trade Promotion Management Images

Salesforce Trade Promotion Management