We enabled real-time visibility and control to measure and optimize investments in trade promotions for 18+ countries, with more than 200,000+ promotions per year
Business Challenge
The Global CPG giant meets every day needs for nutrition, hygiene and personal care touching 2.5 billion people every day. Trade spend is the second largest expenditure after Cost of Goods (COG), the company pays out close to 20% of annual gross sales for trade deals.
The client was finding it challenging to monitor & measure the effectiveness of trade promotions due to the lack of an integrated solution. While teams in some countries were using spreadsheets, in other places they were using local stand-alone applications for promotion planning.
Additionally, owing to different channel structures across countries, promotions were looked at in silos, tailored to local customer needs. As a result, there was no standardization in the way trade promotions were planned, and no efficient way to ensure promotions were reaching the intended audience. This disparate approach towards trade promotions made it difficult and time-consuming to determine the accuracy and effectiveness.
In addition to this, the crucial link between promotion planning, designated approvals, and spend management was weak. As a result, there was no single version of the truth to evaluate the success of trade promotions.
Mindtree Solution
Mindtree engaged with client teams across geographies to analyze and understand the trade promotion landscape. We plotted the differences in promotion management across countries, worked closely with the sales, finance, and marketing teams to ensure we captured the requirements of each function and drew an overall roadmap of the program
With the information gathered, Mindtree defined the guiding principles to create a comprehensive, well-integrated, and easy-to-use solution to manage trade promotions. These principles included:
- Bring in uniformity in trade promotion planning process
- Enhance transparency in managing promotion budgets and measuring ROI
- Increase user confidence in promotion planning
- Address country complexity and drive growth
Our initial goal was to define the promotion planning value chain (from promotion creation to evaluation) and create a detailed definition process which would help standardize promotion planning across geographies. We looked at multiple aspects of promotion planning and the different factors considered by various countries. We created a framework with these best practices which served as a guideline for promotion creation.
This was our first milestone, and we managed to get everyone on board.
We now moved on to addressing country-specific business needs. The teams worked closely with each country to understand the various business scenarios, unique requirements, that helped us tailor our solution to address pain points effectively.
Solution Highlights
Some of the critical business requirements were:
- Promotion planning to meet complex & varying channel structure by geographies
The client was able to create multiple customer hierarchies,which helped define promotions not only at hierarchical levels of customer and product but also at region, cluster, area, and store size levels. This proved to be useful in countries with a large geographical area, multi-level distribution channel, and different retail format size - Defining promotion approval process
Mindtree addressed this pain point by creating an extensive Approval Workflow module, which allowed multiple levels of approvals (to cater to country-specific needs). In addition, it also offered a unique capability of keeping the line function leadership in the loop. - Capability to measure promotion success before it goes live
One of Mindtree’s unique offerings was the ability to measure promotion success by defining multiple real-time scenarios. This helped business gauge the success/failure of a promotion plan and make necessary adjustments even before it was rolled out in the market - Plan multiple and complex promotions at the same time
Mindtree’s solution enabled client teams to plan 19 different types of promotions, with multiple customer-product combinations at the same time. Additionally, promotions could be planned either for a specific period or the entire year at one go - Seamless integration with ERP and other legacy systems
Mindtree’s solution was integrated with ERP and other country-specific legacy ystems. As a result, all relevant information was available for timely decision making
Value Delivered
- Implemented single version of truth globally
The solution has been implemented in 18+ countries over the last decade, with over 3000 users accessing it to plan their promotions. - Increased ROI measurement
With increased control over budget management, the client was able to effectively measure ROI and re-allocate funds due to the better visibility across markets and channels. - Enhanced scalability & flexibility in trade promotions
The application has handled over half a million promotions, with an average of 200,000+ promotions a year including new product launches. Integrated workflows and approval processes allowed management to understand activities, monitor controls reduced the time taken to resolve deductions and focus on business outcomes. - Improved accuracy of planning and forecasting
Our solution allowed the business users to perform what-if scenarios prior to the planning of actual promotions, allows to compare planned vs actuals data; thereby giving crucial insights into the extent to which the actual promotion was able to meet the planned criteria. This allowed the business to redefine and tweak promotions the next time around. - Expedited user onboarding with custom user interface
Mindtree’s unique user interface helped create promotions in just 3 steps. Users were now able to plan promotions across customers, including, general trade and modern trade, catering to primary, secondary, and EPOS sales, seamlessly. - Enhanced features for an all-inclusive trade promotion solution
Budget Management, Promotion Calendar Setup, Promotion Approval Workflow, and Sell-In/Sell-Out based Promotion Evaluation were added as key features to make this an all-inclusive, one-stop, promotion management solution. This leveraged Mindtree’s expertise and differentiated thinking in managing Trade Promotions effectively.
"It has been a complete BAU and 100% remote working even during the pandemic. We have seen zero disturbance to the business teams across all countries. You have ensured zero defect leakage in the soft freeze releases during this time.
Great resilience from the Mindtree team…Thanks for staying focussed during these tough times."
– TPM Technology Team, CPG Giant
