Ahold And Trading Partners Leverage Collaborative Services With DemandTec

San Mateo, CA: DemandTec Inc. has announced that customer success continues to grow with DemandTec End-to-End Promotion Management, a comprehensive solution on the DemandTec network designed to improve promotion efficiency and effectiveness for retailers and consumer products companies.

According to Gartner Inc., most retailers dedicate a significant amount of effort and margin dollars toward weekly or monthly promotions, with a typical food retailer realizing up to 60 percent of its revenue from promoted items.

"In the dynamic retail industry, competition has become increasingly fierce, and the ability to efficiently and effectively manage promotions is a competitive advantage. Successful retailers are moving closer to managing this complex process in an integrated and collaborative manner from end-to-end with their trading partners," says Kevin Sterneckert, Research Director for Consumer Value Chain at Gartner, Inc.

DemandTec customers are a driving force behind broad industry adoption with services that define a comprehensive and collaborative promotion process. Using DemandTec End-to-End Promotion Management, Ahold USA has realized significant time and cost-savings benefits by collaborating with its manufacturer trading partners directly on the DemandTec network.

Today, nearly all of Ahold USA's trade promotion deals are submitted directly by its trading partners on DemandTec, saving countless hours of manual data entry.

"DemandTec has become a trusted partner for driving key merchandising and marketing processes within Ahold," says Jeff Martin, Executive Vice President of Merchandising and Marketing for Ahold USA. "Ahold's business teams leverage the collaborative platform from the origin of negotiated deals with suppliers to executing promotional activities that touch our customers."

Ahold USA uses DemandTec End-to-End Promotion Management to manage the promotion planning process, from supplier planning and negotiation to executing highly versioned, targeted events across all customer touchpoints. The solution links the trading partners in a collaborative environment enabling them to:

• Effectively plan, negotiate, execute, and track win-win promotions;
• Improve promotion effectiveness with the ability to forecast the impact of promotions and tactics using proven analytics;
• Deliver more targeted and localized messages to customers by automating promotion versions;
• Efficiently access a single system of record for promotions and events.

Ahold USA subscribes to services in DemandTec End-to-End Promotion Management and DemandTec Lifecycle Price Optimization, a comprehensive pricing solution that can price the entire store including new items, regular retail items, promoted items, and clearance items.

Consumer products companies subscribe to a corresponding set of services on the DemandTec network to improve the quality and volume of trade deals they submit to retail trading partners. The DemandTec Total Trade Optimization solution, used by leading manufacturers including Kraft Foods, General Mills, and ConAgra Foods, offers a science-based platform to optimize pricing, promotion, and trade planning activities.

ptimized trade plans are submitted directly to retail trading partners, like Ahold USA, that leverage DemandTec's Deal Management service.