If
you are in the process of requesting proposals from vendors
for a trade promotion management (TPM) system, you already
know that trade promotion management is a complicated
topic that is critical to your company’s profitability.
These 10 RFP suggestions can help you quickly cut through
vendor’s sales and marketing hype. These suggestions
can help you determine which vendors have the proven
track record to deliver a quality product/service, on-time,
in budget, with the functionality you need:
1. Be sure to ask for at least 5 referenceable
clients in production for true closed loop TPM that have
been in production for more than 3 years. Ask to meet
with several of these clients for an on-site demo.
2. Be sure the vendor’s software
demo is a live demo with example data. The demo should
demonstrate how it would handle and adapt to many of
your internal trade promotion business processes. Don’t
just accept PowerPoint presentations with sample screens.
3. Confirm that all of the functionality
in the demo is included in the vendor's proposal. If
not, what is the timing and cost?
4. When comparing vendors, be sure
to compare only the TPM division of each vendor. Company
size alone does not guarantee the successful TPM project
outcome. Compare resources dedicated to closed-loop TPM
within your industry.
5. If possible, ask for references
from field sales people that have used several different
TPM systems in production, not just someone at corporate
HQ.
6. Put together a detailed list of
features and/or functionality you would like to see during
the live demo, but give the vendor flexibility to cover
the functionality in different order/sequence than your
RFP document. Consider organizing your wish-list by department
and/or work-flow.
7. Spend time reviewing the systems
integration process to find out how the system will adapt
to new versions of their software and your internal systems.
8. Ask that the live demo be in the
current software version that is in production.
9. Ask to see sample training materials
and ratings/evaluations of students that have attended
training classes over the past three years.
10. Find out if the implementation
and software customization is a fixed-fee, or if it
is a time-and materials quote.
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