Globalizing TPM: P&G's Story
| Beth Schied and Calvin Barnes of the The Procter & Gamble company (P&G) kicked off the June 2010 Trade Promotion Management Share Group meeting by presenting their company's program to globalize TPM in an effort to increase visibility in trade spend, ensure SOX compliance and boost trade fund effectiveness. After performing a gap analysis by region (or continent), the company chose to implement Siebel 7.8. Five years into the project, P&G has rolled out the solution to more than 30 countries with more to come. A quick tally of share group members revealed that only two other companies also had standard trade fund systems and processes across continents; about one third of the group had them across countries. Based on the many lessons learned along the way, Schied and Barnes shared some best practice tips for share group members: 1. Get a global mandate upfront versus allowing implementation to be a decision based on country/region 2. Identify a well-versed internal project manager in each country to lead adoption 3. Build global, regional and country governance teams, which among other tasks, can enable change management 4. Implement training and certification programs to develop systems knowledge that tie into business needs. 5. Partner with third party, which can help develop solutions and provide a checks and balances perspective 6. Put a post-implementation team in place to answer any questions that may arise In addition to rolling the solution out to more countries, P&G will soon move into the next phase of the program to achieve useability improvements, advanced analytics and off-line mobility capabilities. Group Discussion Topics After the P&G presentation, Lora Cecere, partner with the Altimeter Group, lead a lively group discussion on topics that mattered most to members. 1. Architecture Options/Concerns: As expected, most share group members cited mild dissatisfaction when it comes to the tools they are using for trade promotion management. Research indicates that most companies go through three TPM implementations before they find the "right" fit. About 10 members in the share group revealed that they are currently upgrading trade funds systems. The general consensus of dissatisfaction among the group rested in the assumptions that vendors are slowing down with new releases, prompting CG companies to build their own solutions. Meanwhile, mergers and acquisitions in the market confuse things and consumer goods companies lack the influence to instill change. Cloud and software-as-a-service tools were discussed briefly as alternatives. The good news is they offer flexibility at a lower cost. The bad news is that no solution exists yet that is customizable enough to meet the needs unique to the consumer goods space. 2. Putting the "O" in TPM: 30 percent of companies in the group are using some form of trade promotion optimization (TPO) to deduce what a good promotion looks like, but there is not yet a shared definition of TPO. Members agree that a best practice for TPO is to set expectations. It's directional versus absolute as in it will get you in the area of where you want to be, but it won't provide the exact location. For most companies, sales and marketing is an input to the process, but it's important to also define an owner. Other companies struggle to find a home for TPO. Business process outsourcing is an option, but typically companies need to do a lot of prep work to ensure that they are not outsourcing chaos. Technology tried for TPO among the group includes DemandTec, M-Factor, Dementra, Neilsen Answers and IRI LiquidData. 3. Shopper Insights: Only three companies in the group are leveraging shopper insights for TPM. Some of this problem lies in the fact that each retailer defines store clusters differently and the technology simply can't keep up. Four companies in the group are trying shelf virtualization to gain shopper insights, which is most successful when paired with a new product launch. |