Revenue Management Optimization

Consumer product companies spend extensively on trade promotions—to the tune of $1 trillion each year. The disappointing part is that about 40 percent of that spending doesn’t drive the desired results. With so much at stake and the odds stacked so high, companies need to focus trade spending on promotions that deliver greater impact to the bottom line while improving efficiencies throughout the complex and oftentimes disparate trade processes.

Simply put, we’re talking about optimization. After all, companies spend more of their marketing budgets on trade promotion than on anything else. But with so many moving parts involved, it’s not surprising that companies often build a series of disjointed roads rather than a unified highway. When optimized, the range of considerations involved—from pricing strategies and promotion allocations to considering which retail partners to engage—align to forge a coordinated strategy that eliminates ineffective spending and maximizes impact.

And that’s where it pays to have a complete view of your trade promotion program. Nielsen’s end-to-end revenue management optimization suite offers the clearest and most complete view available. That’s because it boosts the effectiveness of trade promotions by aligning information-rich, analytic-driven decision making with the complete selling process. In short, we help companies connect revealing sales data with the right technology and proven processes. With a comprehensive vision across these areas, we can help you improve pricing decisions, enhance the efficiency of trade spending and ensure product availability.

So what does the comprehensive optimization picture involve?

• Strategic planning: Make more confident annual price and promotion strategies based on extensive scenario planning, driven by using predictive analytics to drive precise promotion strategies and execution-oriented sales plans.
• Tactical planning: Deliver execution-oriented sales plans aligned to your greatest opportunities verified through event-level scenario planning and predictive analytics.
• Integrated promotion management: Create promotion programs that effectively integrate execution, management and program fulfillment.
• Ongoing retail execution: Monitor trade promotion performance in real time to maximize retail promotion compliance, product distribution and inventory availability.
• Post-event analytics: Perform comprehensive profit and loss analyses after each event to guide future program decisions.

So when we look at how trade spending has doubled over the past 10 years—at the expense of profits—and is now more than twice that of ad spending, can you afford to have anything less than a complete view of your trade promotion initiatives?