SERVING ALL CONSUMER PRODUCTS INDUSTRIES

Supporting the 2nd Highest Line Item in a Consumer Products Company Financials

Trade and channel promotion, co-op advertising, market development funding or whatever the program goes by in your company is often one of the highest single line items a corporate balance sheet. Spending on channel promotion is reaching one trillion dollars annually on a global scale according to the acclaimed book, The Invisible Economy of Consumer Goods (TradeScope Press, 2021). Managing this money and more specifically, planning effective and successful trade channel promotions has become a multi-billion-dollar business in its own right.

Unfortunately, the failure rate for trade and channel promotions approaches more than 50%, which means that more than half of the promotions run fail to attain break-even status (selling more product at retail during a promotion than what is purchased to support the promotion). The hundreds of billions of dollars of investment into trade and channel promotion software solutions and management systems continue to generate a monstrous headache for sales, marketing, finance and operations executives across all consumer products sectors.

The Most Suitable TPM Platform for the Entire Consumer Products Industry

FireTPM™ is built to accommodate any consumer products industry sector because it has been designed for flexibility, speed and low cost of implementation and operation. It is a true platform rather than a hard-coded and pre-built “solution” as the traditional TPM vendor offerings are to enable faster data management, on-the-fly functionality updating, and the accommodation of any external data management system, ERP or corporate IT standards.

Other TPM solutions claim this same capability, but as so many frustrated consumer products executives know, that’s all it is—a claim.

The amount of data from both internal and external sources, including sales revenues, shipped volumes, total product SKUs, point-of-sale results and consumer purchasing and consumption intelligence continues to pressure the traditional TPM technology resulting in high costs to continually update and upgrade functionality, ingest, clean and harmonize data and even higher costs to continually customize and implement new solutions. The surrounding demand chain technology supporting consumer products industry trade and channel promotion includes solutions and platforms like demand planning, supply chain, logistics, warehouse management, marketing, social media, ecommerce and of course, the corporate ERP back-end.

FireTPM™ has been designed and developed to fit any corporate IT portfolio and all forms of trade and channel promotion.

Consumer Packaged Goods

Fast moving consumer goods is the most robust and demanding of trade promotion management because of the huge volumes of products, retailers, and amounts of promotional funding available in the marketplace globally. CPG ranks as the highest in trade spending of any consumer products sector approaching more than $1 trillion annually. The concentration of TPM vendor software solutions is higher than any other industry and the intensity of the promotion planning is unparalleled in any consumer sector. FireTPM™ enables the most effective promotion planning, fund and budget allocation, settlement accounting and analytics of any platform to date.

Consumer Electronics and High Tech

The increase in both products and channels of distribution of consumer electronics, both in brick and mortar and online retailing has forced many major CE companies to orient their entire trade and channel promotion planning, execution and management to accommodate these faster moving channels. This means that the more typical methods of trade and channel management of internal or third-party outsourcing of TPM is giving way to more sophisticated needs for functionality and operational management. FireTPM™ is perfect for the major CE company which is looking into upgrading their internal technology to do more to enable higher revenue growth and smarter channel promotions. Our patent-pending technology is a smart buy for any size CE company—giving them the same robust and sophisticated functionality as the largest consumer companies.

Fashion

The history of trade and channel promotion began in the world of fashion. The modern fashion company is finding that their co-op advertising programs, where fixed terms and conditions were traditionally the prevalent basis for retailer funding and execution has significantly changed. Retailers, both brick-and-mortar and online have changed how these fashion companies go to market; and with the pressure from an emerging global manufacturing and distribution, the impact to go-to-market promotion is significant. FireTPM™ can rapidly accommodate the variances in promotions from one retail type to another and help the fashion company not only plan more effectively but accommodate the long seasonal planning cycles across the entire channel landscape—and do it fast, inexpensively and more effectively than any other solution.

Hardware/DIY

Go to any big box DIY retailer and you will see hundreds of thousands of SKUs for everything from light bulbs to lumber. This industry has a long history of sophisticated promotion planning with key account managers planning programs that contain advertising, price promotion, shipment and consumption formats like those in the CPG industry sector. This means that companies are beginning to demand more sophistication from their internal TPM and IT teams and look at the TPM vendor marketplace for solutions. The FireTPM™ data model accommodates the high volumes of product and the multi-level distribution that is common in the Hardware/DIY industry. Because these companies have relied on third-party and internally-developed legacy solutions, finding out how expensive the TPM vendor solutions can be is frustrating. But with FireTPM™, these companies can find a better solution at far lower costs.

Major Appliances

Major appliances, similar to most high-ticket cost consumer products relies on both mass merchandiser and big box retailers as well as local appliance dealers and distributors. This broad channel of distribution also requires huge variances in how promotional funds are planned, executed and analyzed. Sales organizations are continually pressured to meet forecast objectives with trade and channel promotion being the number one method for selling-in the deal to the customer. Traditional trade promotion vendor technology is often unable to accommodate this unique combination of promotion planning and execution, but FireTPM™ has the data model, flexible functionality and rapid updating to enable seamless and trusted promotion planning. Whether it is high consumer traffic like a big box retailer or commercial sales and installation of a local dealer, FireTPM™ is the right TPM platform.

Pharma and OTC Drug Products

Over-the-counter drugs and pharma products have long been treated as consumer packaged goods, and the trade promotion programs have mirrored the fast-moving consumer goods sold everywhere else in a retail grocery, mass merchandiser, convenience or drug chain. As such, the trade promotion management and more specifically, the promotion planning also demands the same complexity in process and scope as a typical CPG. Even within the ethical pharma industry, medical providers, hospitals and clinics are all hotbeds of promotion, requiring even more structured trade promotion funding and execution. For that reason, FireTPM™ is the perfect solution platform to manage these critical product promotions. The high volumes of product and data combine to pressure the traditional TPM solutions resulting in extremely high customization that results in higher costs of ownership and time to configure and build the functionality that FireTPM™ already has.

Automotive Aftermarket

The do-it-yourself auto repair industry thrives through large auto parts chains, distributors and mass merchandising retail channels. As such, and like CPG, these promotional programs require significant investment and complex planning, execution, measurement and analysis. The support of these critical processes and functions is a perfect fit to the attributes of FireTPM™. The new data model enables the management of the extremely high volumes of product SKUs (thousands of parts for a typical vehicle) with flexible and easily changeable functionality, low cost of ownership and rapid implementation—all critical advantages to the automotive products manufacturer/supplier. Most major auto parts suppliers are reluctant to spend the money required for the traditional TPM solution vendor, which is why you see most of these companies use third-party outsource administration vendors or struggle with internal spreadsheet use and operating at a risk of error and overspending funds.

Cross-Industry Ready

Regardless of your sector of the greater consumer product industry, FireTPM™ is ready to provide the highest value to your organization for trade and channel promotion management, planning, financial settlement and analytical functionality.

See it for yourself.