Comprehensive Trade Management

Oracle's Comprehensive Trade Management (CTM) industry solution for the consumer goods industry closes the loop on the full-lifecycle trade management process — from retail and consumer insights, to key account business planning to trade promotions management and settlement to retail execution and ROI analysis. Industry leading practices have been embedded directly into the solution based on Oracle’s extensive experience working with the largest and the most sophisticated consumer goods companies in the world. This speeds the requirements definition and design stages of implementation, minimizes the need for customization, and most importantly, reduces project risks.

Oracle Siebel Trade Promotion Management (TPM) and Retail Execution (RE)
The core of Oracle’s CTM solution are Siebel’s TPM and RE applications. With Siebel’s robust data model, security, configuration tools and business user-administered workflow design tool, it has the right horsepower to handle the dynamic needs of the industry’s complex trade management process, and now with new Siebel Open UI, Oracle has updated Siebel’s user interface to be HMTL5 compliant and JQuery extensible. This means that all the modern web 2.0 UI features and controls users are familiar with from their social apps and mobile devices can now be used in Siebel.

Oracle Siebel Applications for Consumer Goods

Oracle Demantra Predictive Trade Planning (PTP) and Trade Promotion Optimization (TPO)
Since any trade management system is only as good as the data entered in the system, Oracle has pre-integrated Demantra PTP and TPO into the Oracle CTM solution. Not only does Demantra significantly increase user acceptance by pre-populating accurate baseline and total volume forecasts in the Siebel TPM system, it uses sophisticated Bayesian-Markov statistical modeling to predict promotional uplift based on historical promotion tactic effectiveness. Most importantly, all of these advanced predictive capabilities are available to account managers without them having to leave the Siebel user interface, and trade marketing analysts, who want to perform level two promotion ROI analysis, can access Demantra directly, to perform cannibalization and halo effect type analysis.

Demantra Predictive Trade Planning

Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE)
An integral piece of the Oracle’s CTM solution is OBIEE, formerly known as Siebel Analytics. As most sales, marketing and finance stakeholders understand, dynamic reports combining data entered in a TPM system, integrated from other internal systems and mashed from external sources is crucial to unlocking the value of a trade management system, and nothing short of a world class BI tool, such as OBIEE, is capable of accomplishing this. Of equal importance it OBIEE’s pre-built integration with Siebel, which removes integration costs and enables what-if scenario planning and real-time reports to be embedded into the transactional TPM system for in-context insights during the data entry process.

Oracle Business Analytics

Oracle Demand Signal Repository (DSR)
Rounding out Oracle’s CTM offering is Oracle’s DSR. Based on Oracle’s Retail Global Business Unit’s electronic point of sale (ePOS) data storage offering, which is already in use at many of the world’s largest retailers, DSR is already proven to be able to capturethe most complex ePOS data storage needs. When combined with insightful pre-built reports, pre-integration with retailer ePOS data feeds, tha ability to store other disparate external demand data, such as wholesaler spin data, and pre-integration with the rest of Oracle’s CTM solution, DSR becomes an invaluable addition to the CTM solution, allowing claims analysts to better verify scan based claims, fund managers to estimate promotion liabilities more accurately, brand managers to have better visibility to product performance, and most importantly account managers to perform consumption based volume planning and customer joint business planning.

Oracle Demand Signal Repository

KEY PRODUCTS IN THE COMPREHENSIVE TRADE MANAGEMENT INDUSTRY SOLUTION

ORACLE’S COMPREHENSIVE TRADE MANAGEMENT SOLUTION OFFERS SIGNIFICANT BENEFITS

Business Drivers	Oracle Enables
Increase trade spend efficiency	Post event promotion ROI analysis gives account managers and management better visibility to promotion effectiveness, which is the first step in increasing trade spend efficiency. Pre event promotion ROI analysis give account managers the ability to play with promotions to help them decide how they should be modified to increase sales in the most cost effective manner. Scenario Planning allows account managers to move promotions in/out of an account plan or increase/decrease the frequency of a promotion or shift the dates of promotions to optimize the volume, revenue or profitability of an account plan. Analyzing Cannibalization and Halo effects of promotions, to ensure promotion ROI is calculated base on true lift, rather than pantry loading, cannibalizing other package sizes within the brand, other brands within the portfolio, or the same product being sold at other retailers.
Reduce time spent entering trade promotions	With Siebel's new automated and streamlined promotion entry and planning capabilities, in less than 90 seconds, an account manager can accurately capture a complex promotion involving a dozen SKU’s, promoted over several weeks, requiring hundreds pieces of data to be created.
Reduce effort managing trade promotions	After the promotion is created, the CTM system automatically: Predict the increased sales volume resulting from the chosen promotional tactics Estimate the total cost/liability for the promotion Increase the forecasted total accrual trade funds and reduce the available trade funds Communicate the promotion's discount to the order capture system, planned ROI to sales management, the planned increased sales volume to demand planning, the product distribution change to marketing, the agreed-to in-store promotion support to the retail execution reps and the available funds positions to finance Request approval from sales management, marketing, finance and/or demand planning Predict the ROI for the promotion from the account manager as well as the retailer's point of view Update the Account Plans total estimated sales volumes, trade spend and planned ROI
Improve promotion post-event analysis	After the promotion is executed, the system automatically calculates actuals and compares vs. planned: Promotion Shippped volume Promotion Consumption/scanned volume Promotion cost/liability Compliance rate of the promotion (from retail execution audits and ePOS data) ROI This data enables claims to be resolved more efficiently.
Increase trade spend liability forecasting accuracy	Intelligent, Intuitive and flexible promotion management system that makes it easy and thus more likely for account managers to enter their promotions in an accurate and timely manner. Sophisticated and flexible liability reporting system that enables trade finance managers to see planned, estimated and actual accrued liabilities instantly. Embedded real-time analytics that allow account managers to see planned, estimated and actual spend vs. available accrued funds at any given time during the promotion planning, management and reconciliation process.
Increase sales and demand plan forecasting accuracy	Coordinated forecasting process between Demand Planning, Brand Marketing and Sales, where baselines are forecasted by Demand Planning, New Product Introduction estimates are provided by Brand Marketing, Incremental Volumes and distributioin changes are provided by account managers to create a 360 degree view of sales forecasts. Built-in forecast change notificaiton process, that enables demand planners to see and have final say over large, last minute promotions and promotion changes that can affect operations' capability to deliver promised orders. Consumption based forecasting, leveraging direct from retailer ePOS data, that accounts for forward-buying, warehouse withdrawals, pantry loading, cannibalization, halo effects, weather, competitor promotions and more.
Increase promotion compliance at retail	Communicating Trade Promotion plans to the retail execution sales force gives them visibility to what displays should be set up in stores, and allows field sales reps to effectively communicate in store conditions to key account managers. Reviewing sales trends and predicted lift at the retail outlet level based on actual ePOS data enables key account managers to infer whether specific store managers executed the promotions as directed by HQ. Analyzing historical ePOS data enables Key Account managers to direct the field sales force to the specific retail outlets that have a tendacy to be late, be partially compliant or completely incompliant with promotional plans.
Improve trade collaboration	Incorporating ePOS and consumtion data into the trade management process enables account managers to create account volume plans in consumption terms rather than shipment terms, which is how retailers want to perform joint business planning. Leveraging ePOS data helps account managers to educate retailers on which retail outlets are executing promotions as requested by HQ. Creating Account Plans that show profitability from the retailer's point of view as well as the manufacturers, helps account managers to sell in promotions better.