Tag Archives: TPM

CPG Industry View of What’s Ahead for 2010

4 Jan

My friends over at CPGMatters published a roundup perspective of what’s important for industry trade and marketing strategists in the new year.  They were also kind enough to quote me several times, alongside folks from McKinsey, PWC, Adesso and Synectics Group.

Not surprisingly, the list of themes is fairly consistent with many of the issues I have written about over the past few quarters.  Some of the highlights include: pricing as a strategic lever, planning price and promotion strategies together, co-opetition with private label and maintaining a total category view when selling to retailers.

All in all, an on-target story that frames up some pretty important industry issues for 2010.  You can access the full story here.

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Accolades for DemandTec Courtesy of AMR Research

21 Dec

I try to separate the brandcentric blog material from my job at DemandTec, but given the subject matter the lines often blur.  AMR Research recently recognized DemandTec’s market leadership position in account planning and collaborative deal management for CPG manufacturers.  This report (note: AMR client access only) was published earlier this month by Lora Cecere and Steve Steutermann at AMR — two industry analysts that have themselves held brand and sales management roles for some of the leading CPG companies.

This recognition was the result of three solid years of market momentum by DemandTec combined with two strategy sessions and countless briefing calls I held with Lora and Steve.  Rewarding to know that a lot of hard work across the company has ultimately paid off.

As a related side note, it was recently announced that AMR Research has been acquired by Gartner.  The transaction just closed today.  I see this move as a net positive for the industry and look forward to working with the expanded Gartner / AMR team in the weeks and months ahead.

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What’s Next in Trade Effectiveness?

14 Oct

Trade promotion best practices are fairly well established across the fast moving consumer goods industry.  But looking forward over the next 1 to 3 year horizon, two “next generation” themes stand out:

1. Aligning “top-down” strategic trade planning with “bottom-up” account planning processes on a single technology platform

2. Weaving in the shopper insights dimension to what has traditionally been a brand/category focused planning framework

We are already seeing signs of both development themes taking hold among some of the larger CPG manufacturers.  Better technology made more broadly available through SaaS frameworks are fast-tracking theme #1.  And many retailers who have come to recognize the importance of more localized, shopper-centric trade planning are helping to drive theme #2 among the vendor community through richer data-sharing policies.

Note: I recently completed this thought-leadership eBook for DemandTec, my employer, to help articulate what’s on the horizon in the trade promotion space.   Hope you enjoy thumbing through it, and I look forward to any thoughts you care to share on the concepts.  Since the document has some small text, it is best viewed in full-screen mode.

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Trade Promotion Excellence from a Retailer’s Perspective

7 May

On May 21 at 11 AM Pacific, John Carlson from Cannondale Associates and I will appear together on a webinar on trade promotion effectiveness.   You can click here to register for this event.  John’s insights are based on a set of one-on-one interviews that Cannondale conducted with category management and merchandising executives from large grocery retailers.  These interviews focused on which manufacturers set the bar for trade promotion management, and what specifically the manufacturers were doing to distinguish themselves.

Cannondale was kind enough to invite me to provide DemandTec’s perspective on what this means for the CPG manufacturer community.  I’ll plan to tee up some pretty tactical recommendations to help put into action Cannondale’s observations.  As I started to sketch out my talking points, I ran a quick analysis to track share price performance of the short list of recognized manufacturers.  Interestingly enough, every member of the group outpaced the S&P 500 in a trailing 2 year comparison.  It would  be unfair to attribute this performance to just effective trade promotion practices, but clearly there is a common thread with how this group of leaders manages their respective businesses.

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The webinar will be hosted and facilitated by our friends at Consumer Goods Technology (click here to register).  Hope to see you there!

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TPM Installation, Take Two

18 Dec

dial2Trade promotion management systems are a lot like the plumbing inside the walls of a beautiful home.  If the pipes are installed properly, the kitchen sink, dishwasher and showers all work as they should.  If the installation is flawed, small leaks can quickly escalate into bursting pipes and damaged walls.  Major reconstruction, while painful, is often necessary.

Such is the case with a flawed TPM installation.  Dial experienced this first hand, with a trade funds management system implementation that was wreaking all sorts of havoc.  Jamie Tenser does a great job of recapping all the gory details that were shared at the recent TPMA Annual Conference (I was also in Scottsdale to see this live presentation).

Fortunately Dial brought in the TPM experts from Booz & Company to quickly assess the situation and perform surgery.  From my experience, one of the key insights for a successful software or digital marketing project is to really be clear on the process and objectives before talking technology.

Bob Baker from Dial shared a similar view: “Don’t talk about the system. Talk about the activities first. Then determine what tools are needed. The last step is how the tool would work.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

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