Here we describe the process that Promax implements. It is a closed-loop process, whereby the supply chain is part of the promotion process with open communication between sales and marketing, supply chain, and finance. When promotions are planned, sales and marketing need to inform the supply chain to ensure that manufacturing produces the anticipated lift amount. Likewise, when the promotion is executed, the supply chain needs to be involved in making sure that the promoted products are at the appropriate locations at the right time. After the promotion, the actual results need to be fed back into sales and marketing for the next round of planning. These internal integrations are crucial to the success of a promotion. Often, the only internal integration that is realized is the one to financials, to allow for proper settlement. While important, closing the loop with other internal disciplines like production and the supply chain will ultimately improve future promotion cycles, as better planning and execution are enabled.

Promax views Trade Promotion Management (TPM) as a strategic platform for companies operating in a global market place. TPM is not a set of tactically siloed decisions disparately resolving price, event and financial issues, instead Promax sees TPM as an integrated environment that allows businesses to model, optimise, forecast, budget, execute, manage and measure product and customer performance within one country or across the globe.

Promax has developed a TPM system (Promax-PX) that achieves this vision today and has taken it beyond the traditional boundaries of trade spend management to incorporate sophisticated optimisation and causal modelling to give more accurate predictions of consumer off take.

Promax has for 20 years led the way in trade spend control and evaluation. We have developed approaches that allow our clients to model entire promotional programs, as well as individual promotions. With the advent of scan data of recent years, we have used this to predict consumer behaviour. From an initial prediction based primarily on price, we have incorporated multiple causals. This will raise the bar on the accuracy that can be achieved with trade spend forecasting, accrual accuracy and production forecasting. More recently we have moved to enable higher level planning, so that account managers can model promotional programs accurately but with less effort.

We are also working in the area of optimisation, where we are able to apply corporate goals to the consumer response data, and ascertain how to deliver these goals while maximising profit, and minimising trade spend. There is no doubt that the major Australian chains such as Woolworths and Coles are amongst the most demanding in the world, and the retail power they bring to bear is the most severe. It is in this environment that we develop our software to assist our clients.

Creating time for business managers to focus on the customer has been one of the key outcomes from many Promax implementations. Below we have quoted some of the testimonials from Promax customers that specifically comment on this aspect.

Promax provides real time visibility resulting in significant improvement in our promotional performance as we can see what promotions add value, what works and what doesn’t.

“Promax streamlined our entire TPM sales planning process, integrating information across the company enabling communication of promotional plans to the field teams of over 130 people.” Steve Prescott, Sales Director, Pernod Ricard New Zealand

Promax PX allows the user copy multiple promotions at one time. The copy to date range function allows a user to copy a selected promotion and paste it across selected multiple dates.

Copy promotions, Move promotions, Delete promotions, Calculate/ retrieve baseline, Have multiple working promotional programs

Promax PX allows for two stages of planning; Strategic and Tactical. The Strategic plans are created in the pre planner module and allow for multiple versions to be created and saved.

Tactical plans are created in the Promotional Planning window and become the day to day operating plan for the promotional program; because this there can be only one version.

Yes

Promax PX allows the creation of custom external events. The coverage of these events depends on their type; Global (National), State or Account.

Promax PX can generate retailer specific submission files in a variety of formats. However the specific configuration required by each client may require some modification.

Promax provides a full suite of integrated promotions optimisation, planning and control. As promotions are, via work-flow driven approvals, elevated from one status to the other the corresponding information e.g. date of promotion start and end, forecasted volume, profit, phasing can be used to drive production planning and be a significant input into a Sales & Operations Planning process. Statuses of promotional activity can be defined as “Scenario planning only”, “Planned”, “Pending Approval”, “Confirmed”, “In-Dispute” or “Closed”.

For Constrained Planning– the Promax AnaltyX module will allow the recording of the constrained plans of the business and compare these to the current sales plans. Usually the development of the constrained plan is carried out in a SCP solution (such as Logility or Oracle) and considers factors such as raw material availability, production capacities etc. This information can then be imported into Promax. The underlying principal of this approach is continuous improvement through a robust S&OP process that allows the business to firstly identify the best cases for both demand and supply. Where there is a gap then strategies and actions are put into place. For instance – if demand cannot be met then account managers are notified and promotions may be scaled down or dropped. Alternatively, if supply exceeds demand then additional promotions or greater discounts may be offered to increase demand and therefore reduce any over supplies.

This is fully supported within Promax PX and can be managed and viewed at brand or any other level of the product hierarchy level.

Refer to “what’s a good promotion” White Paper. Promax has a number of methods to deal with cannibalisation of volume forecasts. The White Paper “What’s a Good Promotion” the theory and methodology behind the Promax approach. The current release of the software (version provides some of this functionality however, version 9 of the software provides extensive statistical-based cannibalisation detection technology and is scheduled to be released in the fourth quarter of 2010.

This is fully supported. Promax uses causal factors to create promotional uplift and will breakdown each constituent component into an element of lift.