A trade promotion management system does not deliver results on its own. It delivers results when the people around it are ready to use it differently than they used to work.
That was the throughline in a recent panel discussion held by UpClear and The Partnering Group. Focused on change management in the Revenue Growth Management (RGM) space for Consumer Goods brands, the session defined the role of change management when implementing a new system.
The conversation was moderated by Don Baker and Chris Tunwin of The Partnering Group, and it featured three CPG leaders who have each led TPM implementations:
All three panelists agreed that the biggest driver of return on a system investment is how well the organization manages the human side of the change. Users tend to enter an implementation expecting to automate what they already do. Without clear context on how the system changes their day to day work, and the benefits that come with it, they fall back on old habits.
The panelists pointed to a few tactics that helped. To start, they recommended identifying “change agents” within the user community. These may be people who have seen a system like this work before, who can give the rest of the organization a clearer picture of where things are headed. As Charlene explained, “having those change agents in the new user community is really key to bringing people along.”
Spectrum Brands took this further by running one-on-one sessions with every team lead before rollout, walking through what would specifically change for them. John described the reasoning: “this gave a more comfortable environment for them to think it through, ask questions, better understand what was coming their way to where when we actually launched the system, it wasn’t as big of a shock or a surprise.”
Edgewell’s experience is a caution against moving too fast. Under pressure to show early success after separating from Energizer, the team pushed to get value out of the system before the underlying data was ready. The analytics that came out were poor, and it took roughly a year to rebuild user confidence in the system.
As Rob put it, “it took us about a year to regain the confidence with the users that the system will do what it wants and they can use the analytics with confidence and discussions with their customers. So my advice would be to not rush it. Make sure you got good data in and good data out in order to get the most value from it.”
Looking back, John said he would involve more end users during requirements gathering, not just during build and design. Spectrum’s original requirements were shaped by a centralized headquarters team that understood the process at a high level but lacked the detail that end users could have supplied.
As John explained, “I think we would have been the value add to be able to bring them in earlier and help us really write better, crisper, clearer requirements that we can then build around.”
Several of the toughest lessons centered on master data. Charlene noted that design conversations often happen before users fully understand why decisions about master data structure matter. That means problems tend to surface only after a system is already built and configured, when they are far more painful to fix.
“You end up down quite a ways down the path before aha moment happens where they’re like, oh, now I see what you’re trying to do with that setup,” she said. “And if it comes too late in the process, then you’ve already got a system designed and out there that you then have to try to reconfigure, which is really painful for all those entailed.”
Spectrum took a different path, spending two years on a dedicated master data effort before launching its planning module. Rather than trying to standardize everything at once, the team focused on the specific data elements the TPM system depended on. Then they worked to align those across four operating divisions.
The team also invested in harmonizing external data sources, including syndicated feeds and customer POS data, into a single, trusted source ahead of launch. When hypercare arrived, master data was not one of the problems the team had to manage. As John put it, “it was time and money well spent because when we did launch and went through all the things that are part of HyperCare, master data problems was really not a part of it.”
Charlene and Rob both pointed to the value of an integrated settlements process, particularly for connecting trade activity to volume and true ROI. Rob noted there is still room across the industry to automate more of the deduction management workflow, which remains a manual burden even with a system in place.
At Edgewell, monthly reviews between finance and sales built financial fluency over time. The team used the visibility from the system to shift conversations from gross sales toward net sales, focusing on the impact of decisions rather than volume alone. That shift, paired with sales leadership’s use of analytics, contributed to a 10 to 30 percent improvement in trade investment productivity, depending on the line of business. “We are seeing very meaningful results that do have a true impact on our P&L,” Rob said.
Across all three companies, the clearest sign that change management was succeeding was a shift in how people talked. At Edgewell, that meant hearing sales teams describe their events using the same ROI and lift framework the system was built around.
“When we started hearing people talk in the quads and the progress they’re making moving from the less desirable quad 4 to the more desirable quad 1 or quad 2, that’s when we knew that it was starting to catch on,” Rob said. It also showed up in sales leaders using the data to have deeper, more specific conversations with customers about where trade dollars were going and what they were returning.
The panel closed on a shared point: an implementation is not something that happens to an organization. To be successful, the organization has to actively drive it. That means staying engaged with master data, the people using the system day to day, and the process changes that come with it—all well beyond the initial launch.
