ATLANTA and SYDNEY – 2 February, 2012 – Promax Applications Group, a world-leading specialist in trade promotions planning, management and optimization solutions, today announced that it has received another CGT (Consumer Goods Technology) Award – the 2012 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 12^th 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.

Don Nicol, CEO of Promax commented, “We are delighted and extremely proud to receive our second prestigious award from CGT.  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 this year further enhancing the modeling, analytics and optimization functionality to the already rich footprint of Promax PX.  Promax Applications Group is 100% dedicated to Trade Promotion Management & Optimization arena, so our solution is designed to meet the specific needs of consumer goods companies. The Promax commitment to providing a world-class best practice TPM/TPO solution is obviously having a positive impact on our users who participated in the CGT Readers’ Choice survey”.

The Promax PX solution enables TPM within an integrated environment that allows business to model, optimize, forecast, budget, execute, manage and measure product and customer performance within one country or across the globe.  The Promax PX solution has been embraced by many notable consumer goods companies globally with major contracts continuing to be won in the USA, UK, Japan and Asia Pacific regions.”

“Promax developed the PX solution to be an “out-of-the-box” application.  All of our customers use the same application and customizations are only required to meet specific unique business process requirements.  This means the consulting and implementation effort to install Promax PX is massively lower than that of other systems that take a “toolbox” approach to TPM.  While other vendors are developing new software to meet a functional requirement, Promax is advising which parameters and switches need to be configured in the standard application to meet the same requirement.  The cost of ownership and upgrade path with Promax is lower and easier to manage than that associated with vendors that have the “toolbox” as their software.”

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About Promax

Promax Applications Group (PAG) is a world–leading specialist in trade promotion planning, management, and optimization solutions. With headquarter operations based in Australia and offices in New Zealand, Japan, Central Europe, United Kingdom and North America, PAG boasts an impressive stable of global consumer goods companies such as Kimberly-Clark, L’Oreal, Heinz, Johnson & Johnson, Beiersdorf, Henkel and many others. Our solutions are the result of more than twenty years experience working in close collaboration with leading consumer goods manufacturers, retailers and distributors.

The Promax PX solution has been designed to allow a seamless, automated process to Track, Predict and Optimize promotions and trade spend. It incorporates the most sophisticated tools to maximize a client’s return on trade spend investment and deliver optimal outcomes for retail partners.

About CGT

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.

More details about CGT can be found at www.consumergoods.com

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For further information contact:

Promax Applications Group

Karen Thomas

Marketing Manager

Australia

T +61 2 4982 2262

E  karen.thomas@promaxtpo.com

As per leading industry analysts, CPG clients typically spend anywhere between 12 to 25% of gross sales on trade promotions to drive demand in retail channels. CPG clients are now increasingly looking towards adopting predictive analytics and science based rigor to enable them get better insight into the effectiveness of the trade promotions.

“Trade Promotion spend constitutes a significant part of sales & marketing expenditure for CPG clients. Our partnership with Promax will enable us to integrate predictive analytics capability into existing trade promotion management & optimization solutions. Insights generated using our solution will help our clients maximize the return on investment of their Trade Promotion spends. An alliance with Promax will further extend Wipro leadership in the area of predictive analytics”, said K.R Sanjiv, Senior Vice President and Global Head, Analytics and Information Management, Wipro Technologies.

Don Nicol, CEO of Promax Applications Group, added “We are delighted and proud to enter into strategic partnership with Wipro Technologies in the Trade Promotion Management (TPM) & Trade Promotion Optimization (TPO) domain. Promax delivers an intuitive, integrated platform that meets TPM and TPO needs in one solution. Combining this with Wipro’s proven experience in delivering end to end large business solutions to global CPG clients we will be able to maximize the return on investment of Trade Promotion spends for our joint customers”.

About Wipro Technologies

Wipro Technologies, the global IT business of Wipro Limited (NYSE:WIT) is a leading Information Technology, Consulting and Outsourcing company, that delivers solutions to enable its clients to do business better. Wipro Technologies delivers winning business outcomes through its deep industry experience and a 360 degree view of “Business through Technology” – helping clients create successful and adaptive businesses. A company recognized globally for its comprehensive portfolio of services, a practitioner’s approach to delivering innovation and an organization wide commitment to sustainability, Wipro Technologies has 120,000 employees and clients across 54 countries. For more information, please visit www.wipro.com

Wipro Contacts:

India:

Dirk Lewis
Wipro Technologies
+91- 7760983976
dirk.lewis@wipro.com

US:

Eric Belove
Wipro Technologies
+1 732 216 6242
eric.belove@wipro.com

UK:

Rahul Kadavakolu
Wipro Technologies
+44 7920205496
rahul.kadavakolu@wipro.com

About Promax

Promax Applications Group (PAG) is a world–leading specialist in trade promotion planning, management, and optimization solutions. With headquarter operations based in Australia and offices now in New Zealand, Japan, Central Europe, United Kingdom and North America, PAG boasts an impressive stable of global consumer goods companies such as Kimberly-Clark, L’Oreal, Heinz, Johnson & Johnson, Beiersdorf, Henkel and many others. Our solutions are the result of more than twenty years’ experience working in close collaboration with leading consumer goods manufacturers, retailers and distributors.

The Promax PX solution has been designed to allow a seamless, automated process to Track, Predict and Optimize promotions and trade spend. It incorporates the most sophisticated tools to maximize a client’s return on trade spend investment, and deliver optimal outcomes for retail partners.  For more information, please visit www.promaxtpo.com

Promax Contact:

Karen Thomas

Marketing Manager
Promax Applications Group
Australia
+61 (2) 4982 2262
karen.thomas@promaxtpo.com

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The difference:  Promax is 100% focused on TPM/TPO

The well-respected Supply Chain Shaman and technology solutions writer Lora Cecere highlights Promax as one of the shining new lights in the Trade Promotion Management and Trade Promotion Optimization space.  With the industry constantly evolving and the recent M&A’s of some of our competitors, Promax has positioned itself as a best of breed solution which offers highly sophisticated functionality and a Management and Professional Services team who are easier to do business with.

The Promax solution is well established with more than 20+ years of R&D and an extensive Product Roadmap which ensures Promax will continue its position as an industry innovator and thought-leader.

Contact us for a demonstration or request one of our White Papers for more information

Read more about Lora and her article “And then there were none”

Lora is known as a supply chain & technology visionary who understands software. She brings seven years of industry analyst expertise coupled with two decades of manufacturing, marketing, and software expertise. Her analyst experiences include roles at Gartner Group and most recently at AMR Research.

Lora also has extensive manufacturing operations, warehouse management and customer service, distribution planning, research & development, procurement and human resource roles for Procter & Gamble, Kraft/General Foods, Clorox, and Dreyers Grand Ice Cream. Her understanding of the business user perspective of technology coupled with her enterprise application experience allows her to quickly validate new concepts and debunk market hype. She is known for her hard-hitting, often contrarian views.  Read more at Supply Chain Shaman/About Lora Cecere.

Lora’s article “And then there were none” – Promax featured in “What does it mean for the market?” section.

A showcase of new game-changing technology solutions for the consumer goods market

Technology has become an indispensable part of our daily lives.  In the workplace, it is rapidly changing the way we conduct business internally amongst employees and externally with customers and consumers.  The CGT Tech Preview Guide has been created to keep CPG companies informed about new tools that may one day be game changers for your organization.

The Promax PX solution is no exception.  It is proudly featured as one of the leading Sales & Marketing Technology tools being embraced by global CPG companies to manage their Trade Promotion Management (TPM) and Trade Promotion Optimization (TPO) challenges.

Promax PX is a fully integrated closed loop solution that not only manages TPM and TPO but also captures Forecasting and Volume Planning, Customer Account Planning and Budgeting, Modelling and Optimization solutions.  The Promax PX solution offers an extensive range of features, including multi-language, multi-currency and multi-division capabilities; the ability to handle direct and indirect customer relationships; a clear process to understand the drivers to baseline and uplift; an integrated one-number approach to forecasting revenue, volume and trade spend; predictive modeling capabilities to uniformly drive budgeting, scenario planning and promotion planning; the ability to consider the true net effect of a trade promotion… just to name a few.

Contact us for more information or a demonstration

Download the CGT 2011 Tech Preview Guide

Due to our sustained global growth we are expanding our Technical, Customer Support, Quality Assurance and Professional Services teams with positions currently available in North America, United Kingdom and Australia.

Visit our careers section to view the latest job opportunities and submit your application.

Clorox has successfully used the Promax PX application in Australia for more than 10 years and after an extensive vendor evaluation decided to expand their use of the application to their key Latin American operations.

The Clorox Company is a leading manufacturer and marketer of consumer products.  Nearly 90 percent of Clorox Company brands hold the No. 1 or No. 2 market share positions in their categories.

Preditive Analytics with Promax PX

Trade promotions Management is most commonly considered is the ability to plan and track promotional events to ensure that the payments that are made to the trade are within the contractual, budgetary and policy constraints of the business.  Trade funds (spend) is the bucket of money allocated by a business to fund discounts and cooperative activity with the trading partners (wholesalers and retailers) in the supply chain from the manufacturer to the consumer.

In assessing the effectiveness of the trade funds it is fundamental to understand two components of the demand signal;

1.       Baseline Sales Rate – this is the forecast sales rate when there is no promotional activity.

2.       Uplift – this is the sales rate over the baseline that occurs when a promotional event is implemented.

Trade Promotion efficiency and Trade Promotion effectiveness can only be assessed if data streams of these two measures are available.

To optimize the utilization of trade funds it is important to have reliable demand signal data available that is sourced from a point that is as close as possible to the consumer.  In most markets around the world this data is derived from Point Of Sale (POS) devices and is commonly referred to as “scan data”.  Unfortunately, this POS data is not available for every customer and product that is sold by a typical consumer products company.  This being the case, how does a CPG business tackle the optimization challenge if a large proportion of the data set is missing?

This paper will shed some light on how Promax PX can conquer this challenge and provide a stream of quality multi-causal demand signal data on which predictive analytics can be used to optimize trade promotions.

Read more about “Incorporating Predictive Analytics with the Demand Signals to and from Trade Promotions” by downloading the complete whitepaper

Are your trade promotions effective? A recent Neilsen report shows 40% of all sales came from items on promotion, an all time record for supermarket sales.  With such a consumer focus on promotions it’s no surprise that many CPG manufacturers are now using more innovative promotional tactics (37%), deeper promotions (35%) and a greater number of promotions (33%) to capture consumer interest and sales*.

The key question however is, are these funds being spent wisely and do today’s busy marketers have time to truly analyze the efficiency and effectiveness of their promotional strategies?  Or are they just gambling on repeating old promotions because that’s what they’ve always done, not knowing or having the tools to analyze what worked and what didn’t?

An integrated Trade Promotion Management (TPM) and Trade Promotion Optimization (TPO) software solution resolves all these challenges.  Understanding the consumer response to a promotion can be greatly assisted through sophisticated demand modelling.

The Promax PX solution is unique in that we view TPM and TPO as a single funcitonal entity.  Promax delivers an intuitive, integrated platform that meets TPM and TPO needs in one solution.  Adopting the best tool to plan promotional activity and monitor Trade Promotion Effectiveness that encompasses predictive activity based forecasting is the fastest way to achieve an edge over your competitors and provide your retailing partner with a reliable supply chain and profitable relationship.

For more information, Contact Us for a demonstration

or download one of the Promax White Papers

* Souce IGD Research

We would like to take this opportunity congratulate the winner of our Promax iPad Competition, Mr. Zeshan Syed, IS Manager, Sales & Trade Marketing of General Mills Inc. Canada.

Zeshan Syed of General Mills Canada with Don Nicol, Promax CEO

Roosevelt Hotel, New York City, NY
June 6-8, 2011

Key session at this event:

General Session #2:

Trade Promotion Optimization (TPO) journey at Kimberly-Clark

Trade Promotion Management has evolved over the years, with many companies struggling to manage fundamental trade transactions.  A handful of companies have moved beyond the basics to Trade Promotion Optimization and have elevated their promotional activities into strategic opportunities that are supported by sophisticated processes and technology.  This session will feature a leading manufacturer who will share their approach to this more sophisticated view of managing promotions.

Make an appointment with the Promax team

About the CGT Sales & Marketing Summit 2011

With the continued convergence of business and IT teams, the annual Consumer Goods Sales and Marketing Summit remains committed to providing a single thought leadership forum for CG executives to network with peers, share ideas and experiences, and learn about important industry trends.  Read more……