Tom Tipps
Posts by Tom Tipps, Vice President - Sales & Marketing at Answers Systems.
Shawn Cady sat down with Greg Hilton and Tom Tipps to discuss some of the highlites of the new 4.2 release of the ContractPro trade promotion management application, released on March 1, 2010.
When Foodservice manufacturers first join our ContractPro® Community, they are typically settling a huge number of claims via distributor deduction. The manufacturer cannot process the distributors’ claims within payment terms, so the distributors just deduct.
In other words, the manufacturers are allowing their distributors to deduct claims from invoice payments…in essence, allowing the distributor to make the audit and payment decision. Bet the auditors love that!
“So, Jay, what is ABC’s policy for the overpayment of claims from our distributors and restaurant operator customers?"
"Well, Bob, we really don’t have a policy on this, but I hear that our accounting department overpays claims by about 20%.”
"Wow, Jay, that sounds like a lot of money. How can ABC Co afford that?"
Posted by Tom Tipps
There’s been a lot of dialogue around the topic of trade-spend management in the Foodservice industry; but, in all honesty I’m not sure the industry has ever really agreed on the definition of “Trade” Spending.
From my perspective Foodservice trade spending involves incentives paid by manufacturers directly to their operator and distributor trading partners…to motivate those trading partners to purchase, sell or promote the manufacturers products/brands to the restaur
Posted by Tom Tipps
Through our decades of experience in managing trade promotion transactions for foodservice manufacturers, Answers Systems is able to validate many of these statistics with real-world examples.
Technomic says, "On average 28% of trade claims are overstated."
For Answers Systems' clients the numbers range from a high of 50% for new clients to a low of 22% of seasoned clients. The critical statistic is that the dollar value of invalid claims totals 15% of the total dollar
Over the past few years, we have traded a number of thoughts with clients and potential clients on the use of customer-level purchase information to drive sales and marketing initiatives.
Without getting into major minutia, I just wanted to recap Answers Systems' current capabilities in harvesting and reporting this data for CRM purposes. First of all, I would highlight that our system tracks the manufacturer's case shipments into and through distribution to the end-user. The depth of this de
Posted by Tom Tipps
Price “waterfalling” seems a fairly simple process that deals with the tracking of various revenue reductions/deductions as a product travels through distribution to its ultimate destination… the end-user.
The waterfalling process supports the identification of cost-cutting/margin enhancement opportunities…typically in a company’s go-to-market model.
Trade Promotion Management (TPM) is a term inherited from the retail/CPG side of the business.
The retail guys developed the processes/controls and channel relationships supporting the actual management of their huge trade budgets. Note here that “manage” is a verb that hints of action, which, in the context of trade promotion management is dependent on knowledge.
In the Foodservice sector, “management” of trade promotions has been elusive for decades. We were the “stepchild” in most comp