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Manufacturing
Spend Management
Trade Spend

Maximize Returns & Build Stronger Partnerships: How Food Manufacturers Can Leverage Trade Spend to Gain a Competitive Advantage

Trade spend is a significant expense for food manufacturers, accounting for a substantial portion of their overall expenditure. It is the amount of money that manufacturers spend on promotions, discounts, rebates, allowances and other incentives to encourage retailers to stock their products and increase sales. However, trade spend management can be a complex and time-consuming process, with manufacturers struggling to track their spending, measure ROI, and optimize their promotional activities. This is where trade spend technology comes into play, providing a suite of tools and solutions to help manufacturers streamline their trade spend processes and maximize their returns. In this blog, we will highlight the key benefits of using trade spend technology for food manufacturers.

Enhanced Visibility and Control

One of the most significant benefits of using trade spend technology is the enhanced visibility and control it provides manufacturers. With trade spend software, manufacturers can track their spending and promotional activities in real-time, monitor their performance against KPIs, and analyze data to identify trends and opportunities downstream across the supply chain. This level of visibility and control enables manufacturers to make informed decisions, adjust their strategies on the fly, and optimize their trade spend to maximize their returns.

Improved Collaboration and Communication

Trade spend technology also improves collaboration and communication between manufacturers and their retail, distributor, and operator partners. By using a cloud-based platform, manufacturers can share data and insights with their partners in real-time, enabling them to work together more effectively and efficiently. This collaboration helps manufacturers to build stronger relationships with their partners, negotiate better deals, and develop more effective promotional programs. On the flip side, the technology also allows data to be received from their trading partners so that manufacturers can accurately assess their trade spend program performance.

Increased Efficiency and Productivity

Trade spend technology helps manufacturers to streamline their trade spend processes, reducing the time and resources required to manage their promotions. By automating tasks such as data entry, validation, and reconciliation, manufacturers can free up their teams to focus on higher-value activities such as data analysis and strategy development. This increased efficiency and productivity can lead to significant cost savings and improved ROI. An example of this would be the opportunity cost of Accounting, Data Management, and Sales all working in tandem trying to make sense of trade spend performance data when they could be focused on their purposes of selling, marketing, and tracking the programs.

Better Insights and Analytics

Trade spend technology provides manufacturers with access to a wealth of data and analytics, enabling them to gain insights into their promotional activities and make data-driven decisions. By analyzing data such as sales trends, promotional performance, and shopper behavior, manufacturers can identify areas for improvement and adjust their strategies accordingly. This data-driven approach can lead to more effective promotions, better ROI, and improved customer satisfaction.

Increased Compliance and Transparency

Trade spend technology also helps manufacturers to ensure compliance and transparency in their promotional activities. By automating processes such as contract management, pricing, and promotion tracking, manufacturers can reduce the risk of errors and discrepancies, ensuring that all promotions are executed according to plan. This compliance and transparency can help to build trust with retail partners and consumers, improving the overall reputation of the manufacturer's brand. An example of compliance would be sufficient proof of performance data given by operators or distributors to the manufacturer.

In conclusion, trade spend technology offers numerous benefits to food manufacturers looking to optimize their promotional activities and improve their ROI. By providing enhanced visibility and control, improving collaboration and communication, increasing efficiency and productivity, enabling better insights and analytics, and ensuring compliance and transparency, trade spend technology can help manufacturers to stay ahead of the competition and build stronger relationships with their retail partners.

Maximize Profitability with iTradeNetwork

iTradeNetwork’s Trade Spend Trade Spend leverages 20+ years experience in helping sales & finance teams to gain critical visibility into their trade spend program. Our Trade Spend solution delivers timely, enriched data providing sales, marketing and finance teams visibility across the entire supply chain and into their customers’ business. iTrade's Trade Spend solution gains real insights that can help your business grow. To learn more about our Trade Spend solution, check out this recent video. https://landing.itradenetwork.com/tradespendsolution