Is
your Trade Promotion Management system ready for SEC & auditors' scrutiny?
Government
scrutiny and regulations regarding accounting
practices are at a heightened level in all
industries. The CPG sector has received its
fair share in the past year. Articles
in USA
Today and the Wall
Street Journal reported the SEC's
involvement in looking at financial reporting of period sales
activity that pays the retailer for volume purchases,
simply to attain a gross revenue/earnings projection.
As reported in USA Today, Bristol-Meyers Squibb
is currently under investigation for this common
CPG trade promotion practice and as a result,
had to adjust their 2001 gross revenue
and earnings statements.
Evolving
regulations and much tighter monitoring of CPG
manufacturers' trade promotion expenditures has
made it imperative to have a proven closed-loop
trade promotion management system in place.
Your TPM system should have the capability to
track and identify the loading and forward-buy
components of your trade promotion spending, by
customer, by product size/flavor/case UPC, and
by event. Your TPM system should also help you
document the planned sell-through, spending and
ROI versus the actual results using both internal
and syndicated data.
The
Synectics Group has dedicated itself over the
past 22 year period in developing the industry
standard closed-loop TPM software application,
Account Review. Account Review™ will
place your organization in a leading edge
position to be compliant with the current
and future government regulations, in addition
to maximizing the effectiveness/efficiency
of your substantial trade promotion investment.
For more information on SEC activity, click on
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