Trade promotion management (TPM) is a cornerstone of profitability for manufacturers, providing visibility and control over trade spend across global markets. However, achieving efficiency in TPM is a significant challenge, requiring strategic planning, the right tools, and organizational alignment. Health care and agriculture giant Bayer, in collaboration with TELUS, has successfully navigated this complex landscape, demonstrating best practices in achieving global TPM excellence.
The company’s approach to TPM has been spearheaded by Tom Marriage, Global Digital Lead – Commercial Planning, Bayer. With two decades of experience, Marriage underscored the necessity of a structured and strategic roadmap at the recent TELUS Consumer Goods’ RGM Forum.
Rather than reacting to challenges as they arise, Marriage believes companies should define clear end goals, ensuring TPM aligns with broader revenue growth management (RGM) strategies. Key considerations include defining the role of TPM within RGM, ensuring trade promotion efforts contribute to overall business objectives, establishing and tracking performance indicators to measure success, leveraging insights to enhance trade spend effectiveness, and designing frameworks that accommodate local market needs while maintaining global consistency.
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Bayer’s collaboration with TELUS has played a crucial role in structuring this pathway, Marriage reports. Specializing in Agriculture & Consumer Goods, TELUS offers a global TPM solution which aims to simplify planning and execution for numerous aspects of a promotional strategy across both retail and foodservice, ensuring data integration, stakeholder alignment, and smooth execution across markets.
Bayer’s TPM Framework: A Phased Approach
Bayer’s journey in TPM has followed a structured pathway, ensuring alignment across stakeholders and maximizing visibility into trade spend effectiveness. This approach includes a foundational phase focused on establishing customer listings, fund management, demand integration, and post-event ROI evaluation. The controlled volume planning phase incorporates annual promotional planning, new product launches, and demand adjustments. Total volume planning implements consumption-based planning, accrual harmonization, and budget tracking. The advanced phases integrate net revenue management, trade promotion optimization, predictive modelling, and AI-enhanced analytics.
One of the key challenges in TPM implementation is finding the right balance between global consistency and local market flexibility. Bayer’s approach ensures centralized governance with market-level adaptability, allowing individual markets to tailor strategies to local consumer behavior and retail dynamics while maintaining a core TPM framework. Continuous performance assessment is conducted using a phased proficiency rating system, ranging from reactive to expert, to assess and optimize TPM maturity across different regions. By benchmarking performance across markets, Bayer identifies best practices and areas for improvement, ensuring data-driven market comparisons.
What this means for ERP Insiders
- Optimising Trade Promotion for Revenue Growth and Pricing Efficiency
Bayer, in collaboration with TELUS, has implemented a structured TPM approach that directly supports revenue optimisation and pricing accuracy. By integrating TPM with broader Revenue Growth Management (RGM) strategies, Bayer ensures data-driven decision-making, enhances trade spend visibility, and improves promotional ROI. This methodology provides revenue and pricing leaders with the insights needed to refine pricing structures, forecast promotional effectiveness, and maintain margin integrity across global markets. - Structured Framework for Improved Financial Control and Pricing Strategy
Bayer’s phased TPM implementation—spanning foundational fund management, controlled volume planning, and advanced analytics—offers a scalable approach to managing trade investments. The ability to harmonise accruals, track budget performance, and optimise trade spend effectiveness ensures robust financial governance. Through data integration, TELUS’ global TPM solution further enhances pricing precision by aligning promotional planning with revenue accounting, enabling companies to maintain pricing consistency while adapting to regional market dynamics. As recent Wellesley Information Services research reports, 83% of finance professionals view cleansed and harmonized master data as either important or very important to support their business priorities. - Follow these core principles for TPM success. Companies must understand their current state and desired outcomes before launching or optimizing TPM systems. Engaging cross-functional stakeholders, including business leaders and IT professionals, is essential to ensure holistic implementation. Also, leveraging external expertise such as experienced TPM specialists and technology providers helps avoid common pitfalls. Finally, businesses should invest in TPM features that align with their objectives, avoiding unnecessary complexities. Ensuring TPM solutions support local market nuances while maintaining global standardization provides the flexibility needed for a successful implementation.
