Posted by Stacy Jackson
After reading “The Yadda Yadda Conundrum,” published December 4, in New York Magazine, I realized that a timely statement of the facts could have gone a long way for Tiger Woods. Had he just given an immediate, simple explanation of his car accident to the police, he might not be dealing with all this poking and prying into his personal life. I’m not here to comment on Mr. Woods’ life choices – just pointing out that a statement of concrete facts may have saved him a lot of public grief.
A murky story leaves room for interpretation and investigation. You may not be able to control that interpretation, and that can lead to all kinds of stressful – maybe even scandalous – fall out.
“Big deal,” you may say. “This is a blog about TPM – it’s not TMZ.” True, but there is a lesson here that we can apply to trade promotion management. A trade promotion deal with holes in it can be the equivalent of the PR-nightmare of a story with holes in it: too much room for interpretation can exact a high cost.
When creating a customer contract, none of the following are optimum vehicles for your precious contractual data:
- Word or Excel documents of your own making
- Notebook paper
- Cocktail napkins
I’m sure you are a smart individual who pays attention to detail, but why would you even want to chance it when crafting a contract? Everyone has an “off” day now and again. Don’t let one typo be your downfall!
If your organization has a trade promotion management solution, by all means use it to record the terms of your contract and to generate the official contract documentation that you deliver to your customer. Your company's solution should require you to enter all the key data about start and end dates, volume forecasts, pricing, competitive information, products, distributors, etc. The system-generated contract communication document should have “locked down” terms and conditions written by your company’s legal department – uneditable by the contract creator in order safeguard the company.
By using your own personal “system” of templates or paper, you put yourself and your company at risk for an increase in claims with errors, which leads to:
- Slow/no payment while your team tries to find and understand settlement terms
- Payment of ineligible SKUs
- Deductions
- Upset customers
- An angry boss
If your organization does not have a trade promotion management process in place – or if you are looking to make a change to the status quo – you need to schedule your ContractPro® solution demo today: 800-225-6127, sales@answers-sys.com.
The ContractPro solution helps you:
Mitigate Risk
- Central repository for all contracts
- Transparency across the organization
- Contract templates, approval process, letters to prevent “maverick” contracts
- Stringent processes to prevent double dipping, payments on ineligible SKUs, etc.
- Reporting for monitoring compliance with trade regulations such as the Robinson-Patman Act
- Keep sales reps on budget with Budget vs. Spend reporting
- Manage of turnover/transition of accounts during the employee separation process
Focus Resources on Core Competencies
- Outsourced data acquisition, verification, reconciliation, and settlement removes administrative tasks:
- Sales people can sell more
- Corporate personnel can manage results instead of processes
- Reporting allows corporate to
- Manage market activity/broker performance more effectively due to greater visibility
- Develop bonus programs based on key performance metrics
- The ContractPro Community shared-efforts mean less time and money spent internally on initiatives such as:
- Electronic communication of claim and contract data - Answers Systems EclaimSM solution
- Unit Level Data Acquisition & Reporting
Gain Insights and Improve ROI
- Data acquisition, mapping, and verification ensure accurate, eligible performance data is tracked and paid against contracts
- Reconciliation of claim and contract errors prevent costly pay outs and reduce future iterations of the same errors
- Rebill procedures allow you to collect against errant deductions
- Insightful reporting and timely, actionable data let you monitor contract health during the course of a deal’s lifetime – not just post-mortem
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Tiger Woods