Welcome, everybody. I appreciate everybody joining today for our webinar on trade promotions management. My name is Kevin Bell. I'm Vice President of Pre-Sales here with SYSPRO Americas, and I'm very excited to have everybody with us today. Just a couple of quick housekeeping things before we get started. The chat function is disabled. So if you have any questions, please put them in the Q&A section of the Zoom meeting. I will pick those up towards the end of the session and either answer what I can or make a plan to get back with some answers straight away. So just use the Q&A tool in the Zoom meeting for any questions you may ask. All right, so let's go ahead and let's go ahead and let's get started here. So for today, I want to focus on kind of a few elements around trade promotions. First, I want to start off with kind of an introduction of the what's and the whys of TPM, as we call it. You know, why is it important and why it has value in terms of how you use SYSPRO as your ERP solution. We'll talk about what SYSPRO offers from a TPM standpoint, and then we'll take a quick look at some trade promotion screens and then finally summarize and close it off. So when we think about trade promotions just in general, you know, it's really more than a tactical approach to managing promotions or deductions. and chargebacks and chargebacks and those sorts of things. It's really a holistic approach that manufacturers and retailers use to, first of all, plan, you know, what they're going to promote and why they're going to promote certain items at certain times of the year to certain customers and so forth. It also is the execution phase. So once we've decided, you know, what we're going to promote and how and to whom, we need to actually execute on that promotional strategy. You know, capturing sales orders and applying the promotions to those sales orders and so on. And then finally, we need to analyze or we need to inform ourselves as to the success or failure of a particular promotional strategy. So we know what to keep doing or what to stop doing, right? And the overall goal, obviously, is, you know, is to increase product demand and increase sales to our customers, okay? So just want to make the point that it's a, you know, it's a holistic approach that gets into planning, execution, and then informing on the back end. All right. When I was doing some research for this, I came across a couple of items, a couple of quick facts that I thought were interesting, and I wanted to share those with everybody. First of all, over the last several years, the CPG industry in particular has spent an increasing amount of their revenues on planning and executing trade promotion. So, you know, the market as a whole is really seeing the value and the importance in executing a well-thought-out promotional strategy. Having said that, most organizations are still using, you know, basic tools like spreadsheets or even pencil and paper to plan and execute and assess, you know, a vital sales strategy for their organization. So, you know, I thought those two tidbits were interesting in that, you know, trade promotions are increasing in the value and increasing in how companies are allocating dollars towards those strategies. But a lot of companies are still using basic tools to plan and execute and assess the success of their promotional activities. So let's look at a quick couple of scenarios. So let's look at a quick couple of scenarios. In this first scenario, we have a food manufacturer and they sell to major grocery chains. And what they've done in terms of a promotional strategy is they've, you know, they've offered a 10% discount for, you know, 100 units. And they've increased that to 20% for 500 units. So obviously this encourages their customers to order more and to stock more at their location. to take advantage of these higher discounts. So this is one simple example of, you know, where trade promotions management comes into play in terms of how companies, you know, think about going to market with their products. In the second scenario, we've got a company that sells to retailers, maybe it's Walmart or Costco or something like that. And, you know, they've executed, planned and executed a, you know, kind of a free goods strategy. So ordering a, you know, a free goods strategy. So ordering a thousand units of a particular product may come with an extra 50 units for free, or it could even be, you know, an extra 50 units of a different product for free, you know, making the proposition more attractive for their customers to stock up. And we'll go through these different types of promotions as we get further into today's session. So where can Syspro TPM add value, right? So if I bring it back to the planning, the execution and the assessing of a promotional strategy, you know, Syspro already has the tools outside of the trade promotions management to analyze sales data, you know, across items or customers or geographies to identify where promotional opportunities may have value. So, you know, whether we're using, you know, whether we're using, you know, Syspro's reporting or dashboarding or embedded analytics functionality to, you know, to analyze and to slice and dice that data across the, you know, the different markets or geographies or what have you, you know, the planning of a promotional strategy is very important. And Syspro brings those tools, you know, to our customer base through pre-existing functionality like embedded analytics and reporting and dashboarding and so on. So all of the data is in the solution is in Syspro. It just needs to be visualized and filtered so the people doing the planning are getting good data to make their plans on. Then the execution phase of this is really where the Syspro TPM module brings a lot of value to the table. So in terms of executing a promotional strategy, the first side of it is really the promotions, right? So, you know, TPM module allows you to manage various types of promotions and we'll go into those in just a little bit and also pricing strategies across customers and geographies or product lines or individual products. So you can really target those customers or those areas of the country with the products that you've decided are going to, you know, really move the bottom line in terms of our sales. And then on the back end, when customers pay their invoices and we're capturing payments into accounts receivable, the trade promotions module helps to manage the chargebacks or the deductions that these customers take, whether it's for a, you know, an accrued loyalty program or maybe they're taking deductions for, you know, late shipments or damaged boxes or labels being placed in the wrong place, right? So there's a lot of different deductions that these grocery chains and these retailers will take and effectively challenge their, you know, their suppliers to call them out on invalid deductions that they shouldn't be taking. So being able to effectively manage those chargebacks and deductions is a key element of the trade promotions management module. And then finally, you know, informing and assessing, right? So, you know, we can visualize the effectiveness of various promotions and obviously visualize the effect of the deductions and chargebacks on the profitability of our sales and the profitability of these promotions. So the trade promotions management module really consists of three key elements. And the first is pricing, right? And pricing kind of spans not only the trade promotions management module, but, you know, you're going to set up pricing, using the pricing engine or, you know, however you're setting that up. When we get into the actual execution of the promotions and capturing those promotions at sales order entry, you know, that's where the promotions we set up will look across those different pricing strategies and apply those promotions based on whatever criteria we set up. And then finally, the deduction management side of it, like I just talked about, being able to capture those deductions or chargebacks that our customers are taking when they short pay invoices or pay invoices or pay invoices or pay invoices and being able to, you know, resolve those or write those off or even reinstate those amounts back to the customer's AR balance if that's the right decision. All right. So on the pricing side, a lot of this, like I said, is going to be handled through tools that are already available in other modules like the pricing engine or pricing setup. You know, we can even set up pricing that's going to be captured for incoming ED orders. So, you know, whatever pricing strategy that you currently have, whether it's multiple price lists or contract pricing or what have you, you know, the trade promotions management is going to take all of that into account and ensure that the correct discount gets applied in the right situation based on whatever criteria we set up. On the promotion side, and we'll go into this again in a little bit more detail. You know, promotions can be qualified by different factors such as weight or volume or quantity of the item sold. I've got different promotion types like off-invoice allowances, accrued promotions, free good promotions. And then I can track and manage those accrued promotions and kind of reconcile those as, as I said, if the customer takes a discount or takes a discount or takes a deduction off of their invoice and they want to apply that to an accrued promotion to take advantage of that credit they have, you know, the trade promotions management module will help facilitate that as well. So when we talk about different promotion types, there are really four key ones that we'll get into and that the module supports. The first is off-invoice promotions. And this is really the simplest type of promotion. It's relatively straightforward. We have a discount that gets applied to an invoice based on either a percent percentage or a set value discount or even a new set price. So as we set up those offense voice promotions, we can decide, are we setting up a percentage discount or is it a set value discount or are we using a new price to drive the sale of that item? The second is accrued promotions. The second is accrued promotions. And this is where we start thinking about, you know, loyalty points or, you know, accruing credits against a customer's account. So in accrued promotions, we're not giving a discount on the invoice, but instead we're going to be accruing a value or accruing a credit to that customer's account that they can use either when, you know, paying invoices or, you know, we can send them a check at the end of the month or the end of the quarter or whatever. So what have you for the value of those accrued discounts. The third are free good discounts, also known as buy one, get one, right? So this can be the same or even a different item that's given away for free when a customer purchase a specific quantity of the promotional item. So, you know, I buy 10, I get one free or what maybe you're trying to cross sell or upsell some stuff. I can, you know, buy 10 of a particular item. And, you know, I get a second item free based on that promotion. And then the fourth is what we call off-invoice associated stock. So this is where I'm selling a promotional item and that the sale of that promotional item generates a discount on a different or associated item. And this is a great tool to use for cross-selling or upselling strategies. All right. So on the deduction side, the TPM module is going to facilitate, you know, the resolution or the write-off or matching of a deduction that the customer takes when paying their invoice to, you know, the available, any available accrued promotions that are in place for that particular customer. So it's just another tool to provide improved control over kind of managing those two sides of things. It will also facilitate automatic adjustments of accounts receivable invoices for streamlined processing. And, you know, we can write off or reinstate those deduction amounts to the customer account if we need to. So a lot of nice tools there. So a lot of nice tools there just for helping to manage the chargebacks or deductions that a customer takes within the system and using the TPM module. And the trade promotions module also facilitates multi-level credit checking. So, you know, if I am selling to a grocery chain or in this case to my bikes and blades customer, and they have different companies across the country, you know, I can actually facilitate credit checking all the way down to the lowest level company or subcustomer, you know, to make sure that what they're ordering, you know, falls in line with what we're allowing them to reach in terms of credit limits. All right. So let's take a few minutes and let's just look at what TPM looks like through a few screenshots. And this will be a good chance to really talk through some of these different promotion types and what they look like in the system. So the first one is the off-invoice promotion, right? So you'll see when I'm setting up this promotion in the trade promotions management module, I'm going to select that it's an off-invoice promotion. And when I do that, you know, I can decide whether or not this promotion is going to be effective based on the requested delivery date for that item or on the date that the order was placed. So again, you know, if a customer is ordering goods from us to take advantage of a promotion, but they don't want us to deliver them for three months, you know, we can tell the system whether or not, you know, that promotion is going to be valid based on whatever date ranges we set up for that particular promotion. Also, I can add additional levels of parameters or filters to say in this particular promotion, we're only promoting a certain item or a certain product class or a certain range of items. Maybe it's for a specific customer or group of customers or a specific target list of customers. I can also define what the calculation type is, right? So how are we calculating the promotion? Is it, you know, a percentage or a dollar amount or what have you? And then I can set up thresholds. So if I'm doing tiered promotions where, like I talked about in that first scenario, you know, I buy 100 units, I get 10% off. If I buy 200 units, I get 20% off, et cetera. So you can set up those thresholds within an individual promotion. And that will all be managed and filtered through at the time of sales order entry. We can also determine whether or not a particular off-invoice promotion is effective at the individual line level on a sales order, or if it's going to be effective based on the total order value. So you can have line level promotions. So you can have line level promotions and order level promotions determining on, you know, what strategy you're deploying for this particular promotion. And then if we have an off-invoice associated stock promotion, this is where you would actually flag the various stock codes or product classes or what have you that are going to be eligible for that additional discount based on the, the customer purchasing the promotional item. The second promotion type here is going to be our accrued promotions, right? So this is where, you know, again, you know, based on order dates and so on and different product parameters and customer parameters, you know, instead of offering a discount on the order or on the order line, we're going to accrue a value to that customer's account. And you'll see, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, the general ledger references and so on, as well as setting up the deduction code. So now if a customer short pays their invoice and they want to take advantage of some, you know, dollar value that they've accrued through their, these, these different accrual promotions. Now, this is where we actually flag a particular deduction code back to the original accrued promotion that we set up. And you can have, you know, you know, you can have different types of accrual types. These are all user definable. So you set those up based on what makes sense for your organization. On the free goods side, you know, again, we're going to flag that as a free good promotion type. And when I do that, now the system is going to prompt me to capture what items are we offering, you know, as the, as the free good for this. And like I said, it could either be the same item we're selling, or it could be a different item if we, if we wanted to go that route. Okay. All right. So when we capture a sales order, so now my user is going through a sales order entry, you know, they're, they're entering a sales order line for an item. They don't have to worry about remembering or, or having to reference whether or not a particular promotion. Qualifies based on the customer, the item, the order date, you know, whatever other qualifying parameters we've set up against that promote those promotions. You'll see the system now will actually prompt the user and it will show all of the various promotions that are, that are viable for this combination of customer item, order date, et cetera. And you can see in this example, we actually have four different promotions that, that apply here. We have a couple of them. We have a couple of them. We have a, a free good promotion. And then we have the, the monthly off invoice promotion. And the user at this point has the option to either accept all of these promotions or they can pick and choose which promotions that they're going to apply to this particular line on the sales order. Now that's a setup option. You'll get to determine whether or not you want the user to be able to do that. Again, that just, that's going to revolve more around your, your business strategy than anything else, but the option is, is there. All right. And what that looks like now, when we add that line to the sales order, in this case, we added two promotions. The first was that A101, which is a, you know, basically because they bought 10 units of the A100, we gave them five units of the A101 free. So quite a, quite a free goods promotion there we have going on. The second promotion that got applied to this, this order is the, the monthly off invoice promotion. So now you'll see we're taking $1,400 off of, off of the invoice for that customer. Now the other two don't show up on the invoice because those are accrued promotions and they will, they will show up against the customer's account on the backend. All right. And then once we are capturing our sales orders and you know, and getting these goods shipped off to the customers and, and creating our invoices, you'll see our promotion review facility allows us now to track and manage which customers took advantage of which promotions. You know, you can, we can see the sales orders, the invoices, the values involved. And, and, and of course, you know, we can sort and filter this. This is just a typical SysPro list view. So, you know, I can export this out to Excel if I wanted to, or, or, you know, group all of my free goods or accrual promotions together. Maybe I want to group certain customers together to visualize the information in that way. But ultimately, you know, this is where we can actually see what promotions are, are being, taking advantage of by our customer base. And, and, and we can start to make some decisions around which ones are, are actually adding some value to us as an organization. All right. So that was the promotion side. So I'm going to switch gears there a little bit and we're going to talk about deductions. So once we've, we've captured the sales order, we've shipped the goods, we've invoiced the customer. Now the customer remits payment to us. And oftentimes, especially when dealing with the big box stores and the grocery chains and whatnot, those customers will short pay their invoices for a variety of reasons. And it's not uncommon to see an invoice get paid with multiple deductions taking for a variety of reasons. It could be approved, accrued promotions that they're taking advantage of. It could be, you know, different service level agreements like, you know, where you place the label on a box or, you know, you know, on time shipments or, you know, boxes getting damaged or whatever the case may be. What we see through our customer base here at Sispro is that, you know, the grocery chains, the big box stores, they will, they will try to take as many deductions as they possibly can because they know it's very time consuming and challenging for our customers to track and manage those deductions and actually say, hey, no, this is a not a valid deduction. We're going to hold you to that. More often than not, because of the time involved in managing all of those deductions, most manufacturers will just simply write those off and accept the short payment of the invoice and be happy with what they got. So the deduction management side of the trade promotions management module really helps facilitate the capture of the various deductions that their customers are taking. And now we have some tools where we can resolve or write off or, you know, match those deductions to available approved promotions, really just to facilitate improved control and management over all those various deductions that are being taken. And as you can see, we can also, from a resolution standpoint, we can, you know, write off or we can reinstate those deductions back to a customer's AR account. So when we're capturing deductions in the system, again, a pretty straightforward process. We're just going to capture the, you know, the customer and, you know, the invoice and so forth. And we're going to capture the deduction amount. So, you know, in this case, you know, customer number one took a $200 deduction for an accrued advertising promotion. And we can actually now facilitate and tie that deduction that you're taking back to a specific promotion. Okay. You also have the ability to do a few other things with respect to those deductions. I can go ahead and resolve it. If it's a valid deduction or if it was a mistake we made, we're just going to go ahead and accept it. And I can classify different resolution codes. So, again, I can report and I can analyze where we may be having some difficulties and where our customers are taking various deductions. I can reclassify a deduction. And we'll look at that in just a second. I can also either write off a deduction or reinstate that back to the customer's AR account. And, you know, in terms of resolving a deduction, you see, very simple. We're just going to come in and we're going to, you know, basically capture the resolution type. We're going to tell it, you know, was it tied to a promotion code or an accrual or anything like that. If it was, you know, that value will now flow back and update the customer's accrued balance in terms of, you know, whatever we're going to be taking away from that balance. I can also reclassify deductions. So, sometimes when, you know, an AR clerk or whoever is capturing these different deductions, you know, they may not know specifically what the deduction code is at that time. So, you know, they can capture it just in a kind of a generic deduction code. And later on, once we get more information, we can go back in and we can reclassify that deduction. So, now, you know, we can make sure whether or not it's an actual ballot deduction that we want to either accept or if it's not, potentially reinstate to that customer's AR balance. And then you'll see, finally here, you know, just a couple of screenshots just in terms of what we're going to allow from an auto write-off standpoint. So, you know, for example, if we have a deduction less than $50, it's not worth the time and effort to try to track that down and hold the customer to account. We're just going to write that off and we'll flag a specific resolution code. And you can see, you know, we're going to post that value into the financial side. We can also reinstate deductions. So, if we do capture and research a deduction and we figure out that, hey, you know, the customer should not have taken this for us, for whatever reason, we can actually reinstate that value back to the customer's account and it's going to create a debit note on that customer's account for whatever value that we're reinstating against them. All right. So, in summary here, the trade promotions module is really powerful in a lot of ways. You know, we talked about the planning, the execution, the assessing, you know, what I want to kind of really focus on again and I want to make this point, but, you know, it's not just the TPM module, but it's the other tools that the overall Syspro ERP system brings to the table to help make informed decisions as to how to run promotions, what items or what customers and when do we want to run certain promotions. So, that's all about, you know, analyzing our sales and making sure that we're targeting these promotions in the right way to the right people and at the right time. From an execution standpoint, you know, now we talked about when we're entering a sales order, being able to automatically apply valid promotions so the user doesn't have to worry about figuring out, oh my gosh, for this customer, for this item, for this date range, what promotions actually apply. They can, you know, that'll be done automatically through the TPM module. And then on the deduction side, right, we're reducing AR write-offs, you know, through accurate and timely deduction management, being able to capture those chargebacks or deductions that our customers are taking, you know, review and research those to make sure they're valid. And if not, you know, we can reinstate those to the customer's account or if they are, we can resolve them or write them off. And this overall, you know, this helps facilitate greater visibility into how are we actually performing in terms of our promotion strategy? What's working? What needs to be refined? Where can we find additional opportunities and, you know, just continue to, you know, to gain market share with our customer base? So, having said all of that, I thank everybody for their time. I will take any questions. I think we have one in the chat right now. Let me see. Okay. So, we sell to third-party distributors and are managing promotional activity for the customers they sell to. Is there a way to leverage Syspro for that or only for customers to whom you are directly selling? So, we would have to look at that. But to me, I think the trade promotions management module should be able to help facilitate what you're looking to do there, Alan. Allison Boussand, I think, you know, what are we doing? That's what you're looking to do and that kind of template. promotional activities, you know, against the third-party distributors. So, you know, they're able to take advantage of those and pass those on to their customers. But again, I would want to look at that and kind of model that out. So, you know, if that's something you want to explore, we can get in touch and we can look at how that would actually play out. All right, I'll give it another couple of minutes. Anybody has any additional questions? I don't see any coming in. So, I will kind of put this out there if anybody has any additional questions or any interest in exploring the trade promotions management module for their organization. Just touch base with your partner or touch base with your CISPRO representative and we'll be more than happy to, you know, to work with you in understanding you know, what's your promotional activities and what's your promotional strategy looks like, how we can help you execute that through the trade promotions management module and, you know, kind of get into a more specific demo where we're actually talking about, you know, the functionality and the value that this delivers with respect to your specific organizations. So, at that point, I guess we'll go ahead and we will end the session for today. Again, thank you everybody for attending. Hope everybody got some value out of this and we'll see you on the next one. Thanks everybody.