Posted by Jennifer Grumbling
Lately I have been addicted to watching the Food Network, particularly Man vs. Food with Adam Richman. There’s something about watching a man battle a 30-inch pizza with over 5 five pounds of meat or watching him devour wings that reach 150,000 on the Scoville Heat Unit, this just amazes me. It’s quite an undertaking for one man.
Now what do my television habits, the Food Network and trade promotion management have in common? I’ll explain. Like Adam Richman, devouring massive amounts of trade promotion management related data can be a daunting task for one person or team without the right solution in place. So what exactly is the right solution?
First, let’s determine what the “30-inch pizza” is for TPM? It’s contracts, SKUs, claims, billbacks, and the list goes on. Just to give you an idea, Answers Systems processes over 400,000 claims per year and settles over a half-a-billion dollars in rebates along with cross-referencing over 20 million distributor SKUs and 450,000 manufacturer SKUs. Now that is a hefty amount of data. So what’s next, how do you manage that much information?
Just as Man vs. Food, you have to have a game plan. What do you need in order to get TPM results? As mentioned in a previous blog by Stacy Jackson, Seven Critical Steps in Best Practice trade promotion management, there is a clear process that Answers Systems has identified to truly maximize the potential of your Trade Spend:
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Standardization
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Contract Management
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Data Acquisition
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Verification
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Reconciliation
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Settlement
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Reporting & Analysis
Looking at this TPM pie, you must understand that no part is more important than the other. Each piece of this TPM pie ties in directly with the other parts creating an actionable and revealing end product allowing Answers Systems clients to create a profitable TPM plan. So as Adam Richman determines how he will devour his 30-inch pizza, Answers Systems has set the standard in the industry with over 20-years experience in trade promotion management.