In many cases, the process for sales and promotions planning is manual and inconsistent. It's often more of a guessing game for sales leaders and managers rather than a data-driven, analytical approach.

Yet many companies spend a good portion of their revenue promoting their products or services. According to a recent McKinsey article, consumer-packaged goods (CPG) companies worldwide invest about 20 percent of their revenue in promotions. Promotions are an important part of the sales strategy for other industries as well, including automotive, manufacturing, and retail banking.

The same McKinsey article mentions that 59 percent of companies worldwide actually lose money from trade spends, while conversely best-in-class CPG promotions see five times better ROI. These top companies invest in the right solutions that help their sales leaders, key account managers, and trade marketers collaborate. That way, they arrive at a consistent way of evaluating the best promotion strategies to guide their sales plans across markets, territories, customer segments, product groups, and channels.