The Trade Promotion Management (TPM) lifecycle is generally cyclical, consisting of Strategic Planning, Promotion Planning/Execution, and Post-Event Analysis. The specific pain point identified in the scenario is the inability to "measure the effectiveness" of promotions. This activity falls squarely into the Post-Event Analysis phase.

During Discovery for this phase, a consultant must investigate how the client currently evaluates success. This involves identifying which Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are necessary to determine "effectiveness"—commonly metrics like Return on Investment (ROI), Uplift Volume, Incremental Revenue, and Trade Spend Efficiency. To provide a recommendation, the consultant needs to understand what data is currently missing or difficult to access. For example, are they lacking actual shipment data from an ERP to compare against the plan? Do they lack baseline data to calculate the "lift"?

By focusing discovery on Post-Event Analysis, the consultant can ensure the solution is designed backwards from these requirements. If the system is not configured to capture the necessary "Actuals" or if the calculation engine is not set up to compute "Incremental" values vs. "Base" values, the client will never be able to measure effectiveness. Therefore, while planning is important, themeasurementproblem is solved by designing robust analytics and feedback loops that characterize the Post-Event Analysis phase1111.