How can you get most out of big data in your business processes? Discussions around data, analytics, and applications leveraging big data will be the focus of the CGT Sales & Marketing Summit (#CGSM13) in New York City on June 3-5th, 2013. Please join us in the SAP booth area to see how we can help you run better.
SAP has recently developed two new solutions powered by SAP HANA for budgeting, planning, and monitoring promotion activities:
· SAP Accelerated Trade Promotion Planning
· SAP Accelerated Trade Promotion Planning, edition for Microsoft Excel
Data volume doesn’t matter
Performance is an important factor to drive rapid adoption of new business users. Everyone likes an instant response from their business applications. SAP Accelerated Trade Promotion Planning powered by SAP HANA allows planning of promotions of all sizes with high performance. Business users can plan a very large promotion, with hundreds of products and for a full year at day level, at the same speed as a two-week promotion with only a few promoted products. The limitation on the data volume no longer exists. This opens new doors for your business and a higher adoption of business users. The time invested in building a competitive promotion plan is significantly reduced. Sales representatives can invest more time selling than executing back-office tasks, such as maintaining their promotion activities.
Real time analysis
SAP Accelerated Trade Promotion Planning enables real-time analysis from different sources of data. An account manager can access information at the speed of thought and make informed decisions for improving the business and meeting the company objectives.
Promotions can be planned at day level, which enables a higher precision of the promotion plan and on reporting. Daily planning can assign planned and actual daily promotion expenses where the week and month occur. It allows entering uplift volume and reviewing baseline volume data at very granular levels. It improves the accuracy of planned and actual trade spends allocation. Account managers can have a better understanding of daily sales activities and react more quickly to any deviations.
Promotions can use several dates, such as the in-store dates and the shipment dates where the trade terms are applied. To have a holistic view of the impact of a promotion and to understand the true effectiveness of a promotion, the in-store sales activities as well as the shipment activities should be planned and monitored together. There are several other usability enhancements available with SAP Accelerated Trade Promotion Planning. Usability features such as copy and paste from Excel, multiple update cells, and personalization are available. The planning layout can be used for reporting. There is no more different behavior for non-aggregated key figures such as temporary price discount in planning and reporting.
Simplicity and ease-of-use
The tool used most often by business users is Microsoft Excel. Business users frequently start their planning activities offline using Microsoft Excel, where they document and evaluate key decisions. Business users spend a significant amount of time collecting information in their planning spreadsheet before applying it in their trade promotion application.
SAP Accelerated Trade Promotion Planning, edition for Microsoft Excel leverages the performance of SAP Accelerated Trade Promotion Planning with the most adopted user interface: Microsoft Excel. Business users can plan their entire promotion plan using Microsoft Excel in a fully connected environment and in a real-time fashion. There is no more dual maintenance of the promotion plan and no more need of an offline planning tool for the business users. Productivity is increased, as well as the overall satisfaction of the business users. Another advantage of SAP Accelerated Trade Promotion Planning, edition for Microsoft Excel is to combine sales volume planning, reporting, and promotion planning in a single spreadsheet and in a fully connected environment.
Easier implementation
SAP Accelerated Trade Promotion Planning, edition for Microsoft Excel and SAP Accelerated Trade Promotion Planning can be implemented in a step-by-step migration approach. The total cost of ownership is improved, as the solutions leverage standard business warehouse tools that are well-known in the IT community. The technical skills required for implementing these solutions can be easily found.
We look forward to seeing you at the CGT Sales & Marketing Summit or follow us on Twitter (@SAP_CP and hash-tag #CGSM13). If you have specific questions about Accelerated Trade Promotion Planning, I would be happy to help. Please e-mail me at chantal.henault@sap.com.
