Trade Spend Performance is Our Focus

In today’s business climate, foodservice manufacturers must now, more than ever, treat their trade dollars as an investment, not merely as a cost of doing business. Additionally, manufacturers must have data to calculate the return on their trade spend investments, at both the product and customer level.

While the original purpose of trade spend was to be an investment in markets, partners and customers that provided opportunities in future growth, in a survey last year by The Hale Group, 80% of manufacturers reported that trade spending as a percentage of sales stayed the same or increased between 2009 and 2010, despite a decline in their sales.

Trackmax systems directly link all corporate and sales financials into one database so that trade spend actions based on funds tied to demonstrated 'proof of performance' can be taken.

When manufacturers understand the realities of their trade spend, they are more likely to develop preemptive, long-term strategies that provide them a competitive advantage. TSO not only helps manufacturers measure performance across distributors, buying groups and GPOs, etc., it also helps them answer the question: “What defines performance for us?”

Trackmax Trade Spend Optimizer (TSO)

TSO links all trade spending (often referred to as deal stack: the sum total of all trade spend investments for a given case through the supply chain, pre and post invoice) to a specific distributor or operator program, and to an actual increase in a product’s sales, leading to more intelligent fact-based, real-time spend decisions.

Serving as a net profit return tool, TSO provides users the ability to easily and quickly track trade spend vs. budget vs. time elapsed on a by item, brand, category and total basis and manage trade spend at customer, broker, regional sales manager and field sales levels. Reports reveal the true financial impact and ROI of spend decisions.

Trackmax Insight Business Intelligence Software (Insight)

Trackmax Insight provides a comprehensive ‘profitability’ picture that helps manufacturers focus their trade spend investment dollars on profitable customers, products and product categories, improving the company's net margin contribution. . Trackmax Insight helps you determine if a given trade spend investment promotional event did or did not generate a ROI for the investment.

Insight instantaneously delivers full visibility of a customer's entire trade spend investment, by program category, including contract pricing and or rebates paid to foodservice operators, referred to as "Deal Stack."