The Client

The Client is America’s founding national yogurt company and continually leverages its expertise to develop and market innovative cultured fresh dairy products in the United States. The Client produces 100 different types of flavors, styles and sizes of cultured fresh dairy products.

Brand Promotions Management

CPG firms typically sell their products through retail chains, both large national ones as well as smaller regional retailers. Over the years, these companies have developed a well-defined brand promotion practice whereby they promote their existing or new brands in these retail outlets, through extensive use of tactics such as in-store displays, samplings and product tie-ins.

On an average, CPG firms spend 8% - 10% of their revenues in a calendar year on various brand promotions programs; and as such, they are a very critical activity.

Brand Promotions are planned on an annual basis, and the process moves through four broad stages:

Planning : Strategic Brand Planning and Account Level Planning
Negotiation : Account Level Sell-In, Negotiation & Collateral Management
Execution : Run the Promotions and collect data
Evaluation : Measure results against forecasts

Planning

Brand promotions are initiated in strategic planning meetings and are based on goals for the year and also on the performance data gleaned from earlier years. There are three distinct plans that are rolled out during the planning phase:

Brand Planning – The brand plan highlights the products that would be promoted for the present year.
Budget Planning – The budget plan outlines budgets set aside for promotions, and are broken down by brands and accounts so that account managers and shopper marketing teams can work together to plan the spend for various brands across different accounts.
Account Planning – After the brand and budget plans are created, account managers and shopper marketing teams create detailed plans of account level promotions.

Negotiation

After the planning phase, program details need to be communicated with various accounts, negotiated upon and eventually approved by the retail accounts.

Program Definition – The shopper marketing team creates promotional details for each program. The process also results in creation of documents such as Sell-in sheets, Order Forms and multiple Artwork for each promotion.

Sell-in & Negotiation – After the shopper team has created the program, account reps use the information provided to them through sell-in sheets, and negotiate with their customers to signup up for the program. After the customer agrees to sign up for the promotion, account reps submit Order Forms for approval. The output of this phase is Confirmation sheet, Product force out sheet, and finalized artwork.

Execution

After approval from the retailer, the collateral and merchandising are shipped to the retailers in time for execution.

Evaluation

Data is collected during promotion execution; results are measured against forecasts, and this is used to guide planning for the next year.

The Negotiation Process

Promotional programs are created and managed by Shopper Marketing teams. For each promotion, shopper marketing defines a program following the steps shown below:

Tactics

Manufacturing firms use several different strategies called tactics, in order to promote their products. The companies employ tactics based on factors like brand, product line, demographics, product category (consumable/ non-consumable), and time of the year. Some of the common tactics offered by CPG firms are

Displays – A familiar tactic used by the companies to attract consumers. Such displays can be banners, flyers, in-store TV ads or similar visual aids that attract consumers. A growing challenge for CPG firms today is to manage personalized displays for multiple accounts and to comply with visual standards mandated by the retailers.
In-store Sampling – In-store Samplings is another very common tactic used by companies to reach out to consumers. In-store samplings involve setting up a small counter at stores and provide free product samples to consumers. These are particularly popular in the food and beverage industry.
Product tie-in – These are strategies that promote a new product by providing it along with another complimentary product for free or at a reduced price.

Approval Documents

The various approval documents are shown below

Sell-in Sheets – Sell-in sheets are used to capture details of a program. It contains information about dates, brands, artwork and tactics. The account reps use the sell-in sheets to share information with the store manager for approval.
Order Forms – Order form is generated for each program to capture the details of approval from customers. It allows account reps to capture the changes on dates, tactics details or any other aspect of the program.
Confirmation Sheets – After the negotiation phase is over the shopper marketing team generates a confirmation sheet for each account participating in the promotion. The confirmation sheet is used for program execution.
Force-Out sheet – Force-out sheet is generated by the shopper marketing team to push out the marketing collaterals and merchandising for eventual execution.

Sell-in and Negotiation Process

After the program is defined by the shopper marketing, the account reps use the program collaterals for sell-in and negotiation. The steps involved are

Step 1 – After creating the program details, shopper marketing informs the account executives about the program and sends the different approval documents using emails or faxes.
Step 2 – The account reps take printouts of the sell-sheet and share it with the store managers. The store manager might ask for changes before signing up for the program. The change requests are noted by the account rep and shared with the account managers, who either approve or disapprove the requested changes.
Step 3 - After the retail store manager agrees to sign up for the promotion, the account rep fills in the order form based on the agreement and submits it back to shopper marketing.
Step 4 – After account rep submits the order form, shopper marketing updates program collaterals based on the change requested by the client. The account reps get final approval from the store managers using the updated program collateral.
Step 5 – After the final approval from the store managers, shopper marketing generates the confirmation sheet with the final details of the program.
Step 6 – Once the confirmation sheet is generated, shopper marketing generates force-out sheets that are sent to the merchandising and artwork division for eventual execution.

The Process Challenges

Manual & Time Consuming – Shopper marketing teams deal with hundreds of programs, accounts and sales reps, on an annual basis. During the Negotiation phase, they have to get the sell-in sheets ready, prepare the marketing collateral unique to each account and send that to the account reps. The account reps then print out this material, share with their customers, negotiate the details, note recommended changes, fill out order forms and communicate back to shopper marketing. The entire process is very manual, paper-intensive and prone to errors.
Lack of a Global View – The Sell-in process occurs simultaneously across hundreds of accounts, and shopper marketing teams have no easy way to know which have been approved and which have not.
Missed timelines – Shopper Marketing teams rely almost entirely on emails or faxes as the modes of communication during the sell-in and negotiation processes. Quite often, emails/faxes are missed and account reps are not completely aware of the timelines in which to get approvals from their customers. In many instances, accounts miss out on enrollment and the sales/marketing team works extra hard to fit them in, at the last minute.
Very Document Intensive – Most accounts require white-labeling and extensive personalization. This situation combined with the multiple versions to be managed, makes it a very cumbersome process. There are many workflow documents associated with each promotions program : sell-in sheets, order forms, confirmation sheets etc. In addition to these, the artwork for displays, signages and in-store samplings needs to be communicated as well. Managing all materials with multiple versions across all programs for various accounts is a huge challenge.

The Inkriti Brand Promotions Management Solutions

Brand Promotions Management Portal enables enterprises to create and manage promotions using a centralized web-based system.

Centralized Promotions Management System – It provides a central web-based promotions management system to the enterprise. The dashboard helps shopper marketing and sales teams to manage all information and collateral in a single location, while other users can access the portal based on their role and permissions granted.
Workflow Engine & Automation – The solution is based on a workflow engine that allows the definition of promotions, notifications, negotiation and confirmation processes in well defined flow. The system also sends out automated alerts at important points during the workflow, to ensure on-time execution.
Tool for Easy & Quick Negotiation – The portal is a real-time fact-based tool to account execs for negotiating with their customers. The simple web-based forms allow for capturing and editing data during negotiation and agreement process between shopper marketing and account managers as well as between field agents and the customers.
Promotions Content Management – It provides an inbuilt content management system for storing and managing all promotional based artifacts and data. It also provides an ability to get approval and provide feedback on artifacts related to promotions.

Business Value

A well-planned and documented sell-in and negotiation process is the foundation for an on-time, on- budget and well-executed promotions cycle.

The Inkriti solution delivers significant benefits to firms that have an intensive Negotiation process :

· Reduced Negotiation and Lead time

· Improved On-Time Execution