by Kristin Avery
In America, it is important to create new and innovative ways to set businesses apart and make them unique. One way that businesses have creatively set themselves apart from the competition is by playing with the grammatical spelling of their name. For example, Cash and Carry is spelled Kash-n-Karry. If you haven’t noticed it before, I’m sure you will now notice it everywhere. Every time I see one of these crafty signs I often imagine how hard it would be for a person learning English for the first time. How coming to this country and trying to learn our language would be difficult by itself. Then we have to go and do this! It makes learning English ten times harder.
Alright, so where am I going with this? Well, the world of trade promotion management could be considered a foreign language. For example, translating the millions of lines of data involved. Answers Systems handles incoming claim data for manufacturers and operators at an average of over 5 million lines per month—and that’s just electronic data (Eclaim). When you add in paper claims from operators and distributors, those numbers go up. From those millions of lines of data every month, steps must be taken to make the information actionable. For every manufacturer SKU we track, we have a distributor SKU cross reference that we must make. Our current mapping ratio: for every manufacturer SKU, there are 21 distributor cross-reference SKUs (1:21). We track over 26,000 manufacturers (food and non-food) cross-referenced against 120,000 aliases (2:9). Read More. http://blog.answerssystems.com/archive/2010/10/13/millions-of-lines-of-data-involved-in-getting-food-on.aspx
Luckily, here at Answers Systems we speak the language of trade promotion management fluently and have for 24 years. Answers Systems also understands the anxiety of using new software, such as the ContractPro® trade promotion management and we believe it can be compared to arriving in a foreign country for the first time. Answers Systems takes measures to alleviate your anxieties by offering training that will keep you updated on the language of trade promotion management. We also have Account Managers and Business Process Specialist that will assist and provide answers to any question you might have.
Answers Systems provides data management and technical expertise to support foodservice trade promotion management from contract creation to claim/rebate settlement to complex analyses and reporting. Contact us if you would like to discuss your trade promotion management (ContractPro solution for manufacturers) or contract compliance initiatives (ValuTrak solution for operators).
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