Announcing Enhancements to Retail Account Team Solutions for Consumer Goods Companies

Posted November 17, 2009

The latest Version Of Award-Winning Solution, called TrueDemand 2009 R2, Helps Retail Account Teams Improve Sales While Controlling Inventory Levels

2009 Consumer Goods Technology Magazine Readers’ Choice Survey winner , TrueDemand Software, announced that the latest update to its software-as-a-service suite has been deployed and is currently being used by customers. The TrueDemand solution is used by consumer goods retail account teams and supply chain teams to lift sales at the shelf while controlling inventory levels.

Consumer goods companies are looking for every edge to get market share while keeping inventory investment low through better presence in the retail shelf and improved efficiencies in their processes. This new release helps these consumer goods companies and their local retail account teams better visibility to anticipate and resolve stock outs and excess inventory.

TrueDemand has delivered 5 releases of the software since the beginning of the year. That rapid capability enhancement delivery combined with the software as-a-service (SaaS) model enables TrueDemand customers to start utilizing TrueDemand innovation much more rapidly compared to features from traditional enterprise software solution providers. More than 80 enhancements have been added to the application to extend business processes and improve performance and usability in these releases. The major features include:

Entire Pipeline Inventory Visibility – provides visibility to the accurate inventory in the pipeline and on the shelf to rapidly identify and correct inventory problems before they result in lost sales in the case of shortage and markdowns and write-offs in the case of excess.

Entire Pipeline Forecast Visibility – provides visibility to the forecast at different levels in the supply chain helping drive VMI programs and co-management programs at the store and at the DC. TrueDemand customers are utilizing out-of-the-box adapters to connect to VMI systems like IBM CRP.

Promotion Execution Planning – provides account teams workflows to decide, based on past execution history, the stores that should participate in promotions, store orders for multi-wave shipments to support in those promotions, and execution issues to watch-out for to create successful promotions.

In addition, TrueDemand has added capabilities to support retail account teams that get only intermittent inventory information from their retail customers. TrueDemand has continued to develop out-of-the-box rapid on-boarding tools to help consumer goods companies start working with their retail customers in 2 to 4 weeks.

Executing more effectively in the store and in the retail supply chain with the type of prioritized insights and targeted actions provided in the TrueDemand solution is seen by leading analysts as a defining characteristic of successful consumer goods companies.

Contact: Karthik Mani, karthik.mani@tdemand.com