How NOT to buy Trade Promotion Management software

We've had a busy start to 2017, particularly in the business development area, working on a number of client RFP's/RFI's (Request for Price / Request for Information).

If you’re not familiar with these then this is where a client will contact us with a very detailed questionnaire about our software tools which helps them narrow down a list of potential solution providers in a competitive tender.

The questionnaire will typically have 200-300 questions in it covering a wide range of areas about the tools functionality, our service model and technical considerations. When I reflected on the content of these questionnaires the following becomes very apparent:

The questions typically go into a lot of depth into areas that the client is already doing a good job of and understands well – they want to make sure the tool will do what they currently do.Other important areas of the promotional management process are completely absent – they don’t know what they don’t know.

The issue with the above is that you end up looking for a tool which can replicate the good things you are already doing just faster and you don’t look to understand the areas you need to improve on where there is likely to be significant gains to be made.