Quick Take: Today Salesforce announced new innovations in Consumer Goods Cloud to better manage promotion and retail execution for consumer goods brands. Trade Promotion Management streamlines promotions planning, breaking down silos and creating a single source of truth that helps maximize trade spend effectiveness. And with a new mobile offline retail execution app, field reps can complete store visit activities while offline from their mobile device.

These new capabilities, along with the current product innovations in Consumer Goods Cloud, provide a complete solution for the most complex needs of the largest consumer goods companies in the world to better engage customers and drive revenue. 

Driving the news: Consumer goods companies spend on average up to 20% of their revenue on trade spend, equating to about $400 billion dollars per year across the industry. However, two-thirds of promotions fail to break even and upwards of $100 billion is lost to inefficient in-store and trade execution. Those inefficiencies have been amplified  with the cost of goods on the rise and supply chain disruptions.  In addition, many consumer goods companies are using outdated technology and manual spreadsheets to manage this process¹. 

New capabilities in Consumer Goods Cloud allow brands to plan, execute and optimize trade spend with a single source of truth.

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• Key Account and Promotion Planning allows account managers to maximize trade spend effectiveness by efficiently managing customer business plans and account budgets. Sales teams now have stronger visibility to their account plans, allowing them to create and deploy the right promotion for their customers and help fuel revenue growth.
• Trade Promotion Analytics enables leaders to easily measure trade spend effectiveness and maximize promotional ROI, giving them more visibility to successful promotion tactics. This allows teams to replicate the highest performing promotions and eliminate promotions that fail to break-even.
• Funds and Claims Management provides account managers with clear visibility to trade budgets and accrued liabilities. This allows them to verify available funding to support their trade plans and match claims with payment once the promotion has finished.
• Unified Account View strengthens cross-functional alignment with a unified account view across media, merchandising and trade. This allows teams to layer trade activity with national marketing campaigns and in-store programs to drive higher ROI for the promotion.

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There’s more: Many brick-and-mortar retail outlets lack connectivity and Wi-Fi, presenting a problem for on-the-go reps who need to keep promotions data up to date. With Salesforce’s new offline retail execution mobile app in Consumer Goods Cloud, reps working on site can access offline data to complete tasks, manage order management, and pricing. Once the rep reconnects, the data is instantly synchronized.

The Salesforce perspective: “Consumer goods companies who effectively manage their promotional activities have more opportunities for growth in this new digital-first world,” said David Schmaier, Chief Product Officer, Salesforce. “However, many companies still rely on outdated software to help them manage these processes. Trade Promotion Management in Consumer Goods Cloud helps these companies unlock revenue growth while removing the silos between marketing, sales, and execution teams so they can better serve and grow their business with loyal customers.”

More information: 

• Visit here to learn more about Consumer Goods Cloud and here for more details on Trade Promotion Management.
• Read more about trade promotion management on the Salesforce blog. 
• Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud has achieved Five Best in Class distinctions from Promotion Optimization Institute (POI) in the POI 2021 Enterprise Planning Vendor Panorama Report. View the report here.
• Watch the Dreamforce Episode – Consumer Goods: A Connected Platform to Drive Revenue Growth – on Salesforce+.

¹ https://pathtopurchaseiq.com/trade-promotion-management-2019-new-tech-old-tricks