BOSTON, MA--(Marketwire - August 13, 2008) - Aberdeen, a Harte-Hanks Company (
NYSE:
HHS),
surveyed more than 100 enterprises in July 2008 to determine the extent of
coordination required between manufacturers and retailers towards building
cogent and coherent trade promotion management (TPM) processes. The
research revealed 65% of manufacturers currently use a combination of
legacy trade promotion systems and home-grown trade marketing processes
that lack collaborative tools or customer analytics related
feature/functionality for using shopper insights to develop optimized trade
promotions. These collaborative data sharing, planning
and execution-related analytical tools enable visibility towards
shelf-level promotion product display, shopper marketing insights, and
sales performance data in varied retail segments such as grocery, specialty
or general merchandise.
"Aberdeen's research shows point of sale (POS) transaction data from retail
locations is still a hurdle for 66% of manufacturers. The low levels of
transaction data sharing cause increased complexities in tracking promotion
effectiveness at the store or field level," says Sahir Anand, senior
analyst and co-author of the Responsive Trade Promotion Management
benchmark report. These retail-level tribulations mean that sales and
marketing departments at manufacturing companies are currently using: 1)
assumption-based forecasts, 2) repetitive planning of promotions, and 3)
reactive approach toward controlling cost of promotions, which is currently
impacting 63% of companies.
According to Nari Viswanathan, Research Director and co-author of the
report, "Best-in-Class companies have reformed their assumption-based
traditional approach to trade promotion management by infusing more
precision in the planned promotions through real-time data and targeted
segmentation. These companies have improved their forecast accuracy and
controlled trade spending by centralizing the enterprise usage of product,
customer, and location data."
Overall, Aberdeen data indicates that the TPM process landscape is
fragmented. There are significant variations of IT solutions that are
present in companies. Spreadsheet use and assumption-based forecasts are
rampant amongst two-thirds of manufacturers surveyed. Trade promotion
excellence is not about reducing the amount of spend but primarily about
improving its efficiency. "Sixty-five (65%) of Best-in-Class and 75% of all
others do not have executive mandate for trade promotion staff to integrate
planning, execution and effectiveness analysis. Hence, the biggest
challenge facing the CPG industry is getting senior leadership to shift its
thinking in this regard and to view TPM as a cross functional marketing
platform not a stand-alone sales tool," says Sahir Anand (Co-Author of
report, Senior Research Analyst, Retail & CPG practice within Aberdeen)
A complimentary copy of this report is made available due in part by the
following underwriters: Adesso, Kineticsware, Business Objects, and SAP.
To obtain a complimentary copy of the report, visit:
http://www.aberdeen.com/link/sponsor.asp?cid=5230.
To access all of Aberdeen's complimentary research please visit
http://research.aberdeen.com
About Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company
Aberdeen is a leading provider of fact-based research and market
intelligence that delivers demonstrable results. Having benchmarked more
than 30,000 companies in the past two years, Aberdeen is uniquely
positioned to educate users to action: driving market awareness, creating
demand, enabling sales, and delivering meaningful return-on-investment
analysis. As the trusted advisor to the global technology markets,
corporations turn to Aberdeen™ for insights that drive decisions.
As a Harte-Hanks Company, Aberdeen plays a key role of putting content in
context for the global direct and targeted marketing company. Aberdeen's
analytical and independent view of the "customer optimization" process of
Harte-Hanks (Information - Opportunity - Insight - Engagement -
Interaction) extends the client value and accentuates the strategic role
Harte-Hanks brings to the market. For additional information, visit
Aberdeen
http://www.aberdeen.com or call (617) 723-7890, or to learn more
about Harte-Hanks, call (800) 456-9748 or go to
http://www.harte-hanks.com.
© 2008 Aberdeen Group, Inc., a Harte-Hanks Company
451 D Street, Suite 710
Boston, Massachusetts 02210-1928
Telephone: (617)854-5200
Fax: (617) 723-7897
www.aberdeen.com
Contact Information: Media Contact:
Sahir Anand
Aberdeen Harte-Hanks
Nari Viswanathan
Aberdeen Harte-Hanks
(617) 854-5200
Sahir.Anand@aberdeen.com
Nari.Viswanathan@aberdeen.com