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.

Read more about “WPAS Intergrated Planning Processes are crucial for Trade Spend” by downloading the complete whitepaper

Department store magnate John Wanamaker famously stated, “I know that half of my advertising dollars are wasted … I just don’t know which half.” At long last, technology to forecast and measure promotions is available to brands and retailers to significantly improve the fate of their marketing dollars. But many consumer goods (CG) companies are not reaping the full benefit of today’s trade promotion systems and continue to incur waste because they use disparate business processes for promotion planning, volume planning and annual business planning.

Enhanced, integrated business processes are critical to unlock additional value and ensure more effective, productive trade spend. Yet few CG companies are currently achieving complete integration, leaving opportunity on the table. According to Gartner’s Vendor Panorama for Trade Promotion Management in Consumer Goods, August 2012, an estimated 40% of CG companies still use spreadsheets to manage trade promotions, particularly in Tier 3. But this is changing rapidly. “The biggest development is the number of new projects that have been launched since early 2012 as CG companies have realized that they need to improve their ability to execute trade promotions independent of changes in the economy,” according to the Gartner report.

The success of early adopters is a big reason. In Aberdeen Research’s Top Five Reasons to Transform Trade Promotion Strategies, September 2012, companies with an upgraded TPM strategy saw 80% better gross margin and 121% better revenue uplift from their promotions.

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.