Multiple studies have been conducted over the years on the world’s best selling spreadsheet software and the results show that almost 90% of spreadsheets contain errors!  A professor of IT Management at the University of Hawaii found that “in large spreadsheets with thousands of formulas, there will be dozens of undetected errors”.  A Harvard economics study and the Roosevelt Institute review on the infamous economist paper “Growth in a Time of Debt” highlighted that there was a coding error in the spreadsheet as someone accidently didn’t update a row formula which excluded five countries resulting in completely inaccurate data.

Whilst we all agree that Excel is a powerful tool and reasonably robust, the real challenge is that anyone can create a spreadsheet and therefore it is proned to a multitude of sins.  Firstly, there is no audit trail in what numbers or formulas have been changed, when they were changed and by whom.  There’s also no easy way to test that the spreadsheet is working accurately.  In a nutshell, spreadsheets aren’t always created by people who understand programming well and often there are multiple contributors to the development of a spreadsheet so not everyone follows the same methodology and the design and flow of the spreadsheet can become fragmented.

When it comes to spending millions of dollars on your Trade Promotions, the last thing you want is inaccurate data.  It’s imperative that the numbers are right and that there is visibility to all stakeholders in the business of the effectiveness and efficiency of your trade promotions.  The Supply Chain team want an accurate forecast of proposed uplift to ensure there are no out of stocks, the Finance team need visibility of the promotional programme to manage accruals and claims and the Sales team need to have all the information at their fingertips in order to secure the deals.

The Promax PX Trade Promotion Management and Trade Promotion Optimization (TPM/TPO) solution solves all of the above challenges.  One closed-loop solution to effectively and efficiently manage your trade funds and ensure you are maximising your company’s return on investment.  Download one of our White Papers on related topics to learn more.

Tuesday April 16, 2013 – learn more at our Events page

Join us for an executive exploration hosted by Wipro and Outsource magazine to discuss how analytics and information management can be applied to:

• Improve operational efficiency
• Maximize the availability and utilization of assets to increase revenue
• Reduce the total cost of ownership and the risk of asset failure

Promax proudly receives its third prestigious Consumer Goods Technology Award

ATLANTA and SYDNEY – March, 2013 – Wipro Promax Analytics Solutions (WPAS), world leading specialist in trade promotions planning, management and optimization solutions, announced that it has received its third consecutive CGT (Consumer Goods Technology) Award – the 2013 Readers’ Choice Best in Class for Trade Promotion Management (TPM) solutions.

CGT is the leading US based business and technology resource for the Consumer Goods industry. CGT is committed to helping consumer goods executives improve business performance through integrated media that delivers actionable insight, benchmark analysis and critical networking. For the 12th year in a row, CGT asked its subscribers of over 58,000 influencers and business-decision makers across business and IT, to identify their most valued and used solution and service providers across 10 categories including Trade Promotion Management and Trade Promotion Optimization.

In 2011, we received the Editors’ Pick Award due to the significant impact our solution was having on the consumer goods industry. Since then, Promax has continued its thought-leadership position with extensive Research & Development  further enhancing the modeling, analytics and optimization functionality to the already rich footprint of Promax PX.

As published in a recent Forbes article regarding The CMO Survey™ (Chief Marketing Officer), Marketing spend is on the rise!  “The biggest companies (>$10B) and the smallest companies ($<25M) surveyed in The CMO Survey™ display the biggest gains:  marketing budgets as a percent of firm budgets (>$10B = 11.9% and <$25M = 18.1%), and marketing budgets as a percent of firm revenues (>$10B = 13.1% and <$25M = 17.8%).” 

With such a large volume of funds at stake it’s even more important that marketing professionals can truly justify the anticipated outcomes of marketing spend and verify to their Executive Boards a positive return on investment.

Promotional programs can be evaluated using many different measures. It may be valid to include or exclude different elements of cost depending on the objective.  So the biggest challenge is quite often how to develop a strategic framework on which to assess the quality of a promotion or a promotional program. The result is a single key performance indicator (KPI) that can be used to assess the quality of the financial criteria around the promotion. The application of this measure to promotional planning ensures the BEST allocation of trade funds to maximize their efficiency and effectiveness. 

Inside the Promax PX Trade Promotion Management (TPM) & Trade Promotion Optimization (TPO) solution, we have developed a decision matrix which assists in assessing a promotional program at any level in the business. This framework which we call the BEST model, assists in the development of guidelines and controls to assess the quality of a program and its application will ensure that a business is aware of the quality of its promotional programs.

Contact us to learn more, request a White Paper or arrange a demonstration.

Link to Forbes article