Implementing trade promotion management software successfully can mean huge gains for your business. Having all the information in one, easy to view calendar allows different teams to plan, execute and manage trade promotions. Often, they form part of a wider campaign, so a single source of truth allows for full cross-team visibility across commercial teams. A well embedded solution means that:
- You’ll have a single source of truth with the ability to store pricing and promotions data in one place.
- You can build and manage pricing and promotion governance with easy-to-use guidelines and approvals set up.
- You’ll allow for effective cross-team collaboration between teams internally.
- You have the tools to facilitate ‘win-win’ conversations with retailers, allowing focused discussions on long term category growth so both benefit from the partnership.
- As a result, you will deliver significant ROI, through margin improvements, effective trade spend or time saved.
- Your business will successfully adapt to external challenges (Covid implications, new legislation for consumer goods) and gain an advantage over the competitive set.
Implementing TPM integrates multiple sources of information together, presenting a huge challenge both on the technical and people side. The challenges that come with TPM implementations include:
- Data availability
- Data complexity and integrating lots of different sources of data
- Deciding where responsibility for implementation and management of the tool should sit
- Lining up your organisation and getting business-buy in for the new tool, and campaigning to win hearts and minds
- The threat of technology obsolescence
In order to prepare your business for a TPM implementation, start to plan. It’s important that your planning phase is thought about carefully in order to embed the tool successfully. Here are some key aspects of Acumen’s implementation approach that ensure a successful launch:
1. Identify the right people
Revenue management practitioners require a unique skillset. It’s crucial to identify a team of individuals with both strong analytical skills and commercial capability in order to succeed. Once you have these people in place, assign a champion to push the initiative forward. They will align different stakeholders, and monitor a set of revenue management KPI’s, targets and measurements. They may also be responsible for reporting on the performance of the revenue management team to the rest of the business, so must be good communicators too.
Identifying the right senior team as a stakeholder group
Along the journey, the project requires a steering team to give guidance and provide feedback to the project team. You should plan to share back project progress on a regular basis, whether this is quarterly or fortnightly.
2. Build the case for change
Firstly, establish your change management plan. This should include a well-defined scope, implementation aims, along with system boundaries and integrations. Ensure that you resource for support long after the tool itself has been implemented. Then, set clear and measurable success criteria. This will enable you to monitor project progress along the way.
Then, perhaps one of the most important aspects of planning is to build your selling story for change. This involves getting creative and working to develop presentations, interactive content and communicating your message to the wider business. Host engagement presentations and workshops with your key stakeholders to win hearts and minds. This will form the foundation of your change management program and sets you up for a successful implementation.
3. Finalise the approach
Identifying legacy tools
It’s likely your teams are using old tools that your new solution aims to replace. Figure out a plan for these, and start by moving over the data from spreadsheets and integrating them into the new tool. Ensure that you have archived and documented your legacy tools so that your business fully makes the transition to your new TPM solution which acts as a single source of truth.
Finalise your detailed plan
It’s important to revisit and revise your implementation plan until you are completely happy with it before taking the next steps of the project. Share this with senior stakeholders and your implementation partner to gather thoughts and feedback. This will give you confidence to implement the tool having properly prepared. However, remember than through using an agile approach you’ll have the chance to amend aspects of the implementation along the way. It’s so important to take an agile methodology to change strategy when results require it.
