Stacy Jackson
In our years of experience, we’ve seen many different organizational models employed by foodservice manufacturers for managing trade spending and all of its related functions (contract management, settlement, deduction management, reporting, etc.). There is no one organizational structure or reporting hierarchy common across the industry that has ownership of trade spending as its sole purpose in the life of the organization. In some companies “who owns trade spending” may not be very clearly defined at all – to the point where the scattering of activities across departments leads to redundant work, inefficient processes, decentralized information, and lack of analytical insights. And, we know where all of that leads . . . no true understanding of program impact, loss of opportunities, and potentially loss of ROI/profitability.
It’s important that foodservice manufacturers clearly define ownership and responsibilities as they pertain to trade spending—especially when moving into a trade promotion management offering like the ContractPro® service and solution model. By addressing organizational change as part of your software/service integration, you will set your company down the path for success. Everyone should know his or her role in the successful integration and ongoing support of your trade promotion management and optimization initiative. Not only must you define roles, you need to also ensure each role holder knows his or her goals and metrics for success.
Key areas to ensure organizational alignment for successful trade promotion management are:
Contract Management: how will contract terms be captured and centralized? Who is responsible for entering contracts? Will there be auto-approval logic built into your TPM solution? Who is responsible for managing approvals and rejections? How will contracts be communicated to operators and distributors? What role does the solution partner play versus your direct employees and/or broker agency partners?
Data Acquisition: how will you capture the claim data that will come in response to your contract communications? Do you have the resources and people to handle the complexities of electronic data submissions as well as the more manually intensive paper claims? Are you prepared to manage data mapping? Is your solution partner equipped to deal with these complexities on your behalf?
Verification: after the claim data is acquired, are you able to quickly and easily match claims to contracts? Are terms and products available for efficient and expedient validation? Will you be able to spot and prevent double or triple dip payments? Does your solution partner offer integrated verification/settlement tools or services?
Reconciliation: if you encounter claims that aren’t a perfect match to contracts on file, how do you handle the reconciliation of those claims against contracts? Are your systems set up to easily accommodate the claim and contract adjustment work? Does your vendor partner have the expertise to help you with this step in the trade promotion management process?
Settlement: are you able to turn around payments quickly to distributors and operators to prevent deductions and customer relationship issues? Can your system provide you with key data to help you resolve claims via deduction and rebill any portion of the deduction that was taken in error?
Analytics & Reporting: do you have the necessary tools to manage the analyses and reporting required to truly manage and optimize your trade promotion deals? Does your solution provider offer a robust reporting tool or are you dependent upon off-the-shelf spreadsheet solutions?
Answers Systems, a division of AFS Technologies, can help you find the right answers to all of these questions to ensure best-in-class trade promotion management for your organization. Our typical customer experiences a 400 – 1200% ROI in the first year. Contact us today to get your online demonstration and learn more about how the ContractPro solution can help you improve profitability, speed of data insights, and ROI.