The Economy's Impact on TPM Investments
With the economic downturn, many consumer goods (CG) companies have put improvement projects on hold, with a handful of exceptions. One such initiative is Trade Promotion Management (TPM), which continues to be a priority industry-wide. Companies are unwilling to continue spending 20 percent of their revenues on trade with uncertain return, which is even more critical in today's economy. Many are turning to TPM solutions and more advanced Trade Promotion Optimization (TPO) solutions to help maximize the return on trade spend.
As a follow up to the May 2008 custom research report, titled "Trade Promotion Optimization," CGT once again partners with Perficient to examine how the current economy has impacted TPM projects.
While almost all (83 percent) of the survey respondents are currently using a TPM solution to address similar business challenges, many are relying on these applications to help them increase the return on their trade investments even more so in this economy. Most are using TPM for basic promotion management, including deduction and fund management, with slightly fewer companies using TPM for sales forecasting and volume planning.
These tools are under even more pressure to perform in the current economy as 64 percent claim that senior management is applying more scrutiny on promotion funding and return. This has led to a full 45 percent of our respondents who are likely to invest even more in TPM solutions to help drive down trade related costs. Some companies have limited TPM investments, primarily because of other technology priorities, but those who are continuing to invest are doing so either to build additional capabilities to reduce costs and improve return on investment (58 percent) or because the TPM goals align with overall core business objectives (31 percent).
The economy has also changed the business priorities. Download this research in its entirety to find out how.
As a follow up to the May 2008 custom research report, titled "Trade Promotion Optimization," CGT once again partners with Perficient to examine how the current economy has impacted TPM projects.
While almost all (83 percent) of the survey respondents are currently using a TPM solution to address similar business challenges, many are relying on these applications to help them increase the return on their trade investments even more so in this economy. Most are using TPM for basic promotion management, including deduction and fund management, with slightly fewer companies using TPM for sales forecasting and volume planning.
These tools are under even more pressure to perform in the current economy as 64 percent claim that senior management is applying more scrutiny on promotion funding and return. This has led to a full 45 percent of our respondents who are likely to invest even more in TPM solutions to help drive down trade related costs. Some companies have limited TPM investments, primarily because of other technology priorities, but those who are continuing to invest are doing so either to build additional capabilities to reduce costs and improve return on investment (58 percent) or because the TPM goals align with overall core business objectives (31 percent).
The economy has also changed the business priorities. Download this research in its entirety to find out how.