The challenge
Trade promotions are the deals a supplier runs with retailers, such as temporary price cuts. As Arnott's grew and reached more customers, its promotions became harder to manage. They were planned in spreadsheets the business had built itself. The spreadsheets led to inconsistent data and wasted effort, and made it hard to run one promotion strategy across the business. They also took a lot of time to maintain and put the accuracy of promotion data at risk.
What was delivered
Our team was involved in delivering a trade promotion management system at Arnott's over 16 months. The aim was to retire the separate spreadsheets and give the business one reliable system for planning and running promotions.
Getting the data right was the main focus. The system lets the business capture, analyse and learn from promotion data in one place. With that in place, Arnott's could respond to the market faster and adjust promotions as conditions changed.
What it included
- Spreadsheet-based promotion planning phased out
- One platform for planning and executing promotions
- Data captured and analysed in one place
- Fewer data errors
- Up-to-date data for quicker decisions
Results
Arnott's stopped planning in the old spreadsheets, and promotion data was managed in one place. Data quality improved and errors went down. The team had up-to-date data, so decisions came faster. Planning promotions took less effort, which supported promotions that were more effective and more profitable. Figures are under NDA.
Why it matters
A promotion plan is easy to start in a spreadsheet and hard to run there. People keep their own copies, formulas change without anyone noticing, and nobody trusts the totals. With one set of data and agreed rules, everyone works from the same numbers. Slotwise, our trade promotion planning product, is built for the same problem.