Six Important Reasons To Set Up A Trade Promotions Analytical (TPA) Cell In The CPG industry

Trade spends during the tough economic times compelled with the rising power of private brands, are putting pressure on CPG companies to ensure that fund dollars are optimally allocated. Most channel managers and category heads do not have time to distill the vast amounts of historical promotion performance data that is available across markets and categories since they are busy ensuring the execution of category/channel sales related operational tasks and store events. This is where the TPA Cell comes in. The TPA Cell is a focused SWAT team consisting of a cross functional team of promo, data, and statistical specialists who can extract intelligence from historical promotion activations and sales data. These nuggets of promo performance insights can then be transmitted to points in the organization which are responsible for deciding on promotion calendars and fund allocations. In this article we examine six specific reasons to set up a TPA Cell and the effect they can have on the bottom line of a CPG company.