Katrina Lamb | September 30th, 2010
Filed under: Managers View | Tags: 4-Cs, complexity, coordination, cost-to-serve, demand signals, enterprise resource planning, matching the right customer with the right product at the right price, optimization, overcome the silo mentality, price rules, pricing, scientific marketing | No Comments »
In large organizations pricing is everybody’s problem, but everybody looks at the problem in a different way. Salespeople earn a livelihood by offering their customers prices that result in completed sales. Account managers have to keep track of tens of thousands of price rules governing products, brands and customers. Bean counters in the finance department are concerned about the relationship between prices and costs. C-suite executives are motivated by how price contributes to the market share, revenue growth and profitability numbers they have to report to their shareholders every quarter. And somewhere in the organization somebody is clamoring for a “just this once!” exception to some pricing policy in order to achieve an immediately pressing milestone.
These are all valid concerns. The problem is that the decision makers are sitting in different parts of the organization, their objectives are often in conflict with each other (or at the very least require trade-offs and compromises), and they are not armed with sufficient information to understand the broader impact of each price decision on firmwide performance. Read the rest of this entry »
Katrina Lamb | June 18th, 2010
Filed under: Managers View | Tags: active ways to turn trade spend into trade investment, applies analytical methods in order to better align and optimize trade decisions with pricing and other key marketing levers, business intelligence, distribution, Facebook Generation, foodservice manufacturers, foodservice value chain, optimization, predictive analytics, pricing, quantitative analysis in the trade spend practices, scientific pricing, sentrana, trade spend, win-win programs with trade partners | 1 Comment »
A New Approach to Trade Spend for Foodservice Manufacturers
There is no shortage of quantitative analysis in the trade spend practices of foodservice manufacturers. Unfortunately, very little of this analysis helps give decision-makers insights about the effectiveness of their trade spend programs. The numbers being crunched do not relate to signals about actual downstream demand, but rather to the formidable mountain of claims from their distributors. These claims come in all manner of data formats and accounting entries and it typically takes armies of brokers, salespeople and financial staff to figure them out. After all the cumbersome and error-prone line-by-line calculations to validate claims are said and done, you are no more informed about the profitability or the potential risks associated with any given program. No wonder there is widespread dissatisfaction with the effectiveness of these programs. Over 75% of manufacturers in this sector consider their trade spend initiatives to be inefficient, according to the 2010 MarketIntelligence Foodservice Trade Survey. Read the rest of this entry »