Skip to content

Blacksmith Applications joins TELUS Consumer Goods

CONSUMER GOODSDATE POSTED NOVEMBER 1, 2021
Woman reviewing trade promotion optimized with TELUS after Blacksmith acquisition

Blacksmith Applications: Industry-leading SaaS that optimizes trade promotion management

For two decades, Blacksmith Applications was recognized as the industry’s leading trade spend management SaaS platform for the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry. The company processed over $10 billion in trade promotions annually. 

Blacksmith Applications’ platform was designed to meet the unique needs of its broad spectrum of customers through a cloud-based trade management ecosystem, in conjunction with unparalleled industry expertise. They prioritized long term client retention and a customer-first approach.

Blacksmith applications logo before TELUS Consumer Goods acquisition

Blacksmith Applications’ platform acquired and repurposed

TELUS Agriculture and Consumer Goods acquired BlackSmith Applications in 2021. Today, Blacksmith Applications’ SaaS platform is part of the D.N.A. of TELUS Trade Promotion Management – a robust suite of tools and services delivered through TELUS Consumer Goods.

Today, we connect customers with advanced technology to enhance the collective potential of the consumer goods industry. TELUS Consumer Goods uses such technology to unlock valuable data, enabling each contributor in the full value chain to achieve greater efficiency, collaboration and profitability. 

Your new competitive advantage: TELUS Trade Promotion Management 

TELUS Consumer Goods’ products and services are designed to optimize your workflows, investments and operations and enable more informed decision making and planning. That’s why we acquired Blacksmith Applications’ SaaS platform and used it to enhance our TELUS Trade Promotion Management. 

You can now leverage it to create more efficient promotions for your customers with better planning, optimization, execution and analysis. 

We help CPGs and foodservice manufacturers improve every aspect of their trade promotions. Our tools enable you to do everything from manage trade spend to increase efficiency and provide insight into which promotion activities offer the most benefit for your business.

Maximize the impact of your trade promotions

Talk to an expert
TELUS Consumer Goods software expert

How you can leverage our trade promotion management software solution

We’ve incorporated leading industry expertise and analysis into every aspect of our trade promotion management software solution. Designed with your unique needs in mind, it enables you to manage and optimize your trade promotions and promotion strategies with ease.

Capabilities of our trade promotion management and optimization software 

CPG and foodservice manufacturers of all sizes can use our trade promotion management and optimization software to help maximize promotional effectiveness and enhance ROI. We help your business plan, manage and execute trade promotions across complex vendor networks and sales channels and generate data visualizations that drive insights.

Our tools are user friendly and automate data harmonization for post-event analytics. Ensuring a positive return on your trade spend investment is critical for growth, as trade promotion investment is typically the second largest item on a manufacturer’s P&L, after cost of goods.

Our platform helps provide transparency and visibility allowing you to more accurately validate settlements and claims following a promotion. TELUS Trade Promotion Management gives you a deeper understanding of your promotions so you can measure and optimize each retailer’s promotional activities to drive ROI and improve volume, revenue and margin. 

Here’s what you can do with it and why it’s beneficial for your business:

  • Make sure your trade spend is effective by planning, executing and analyzing every aspect of your trade strategy to find out what works, what doesn’t and ensure every dollar invested is spent efficiently.

  • Conduct joint business planning to analyze both manufacturer and retailer profitability and optimize decision making.

  • Drive financial efficiencies by streamlining and automating your accrual, deduction and settlement processes with ERP integration.

  • Run profitable promotions with your retailers and improve your promotion strategies and promotion plan with post-event analysis and “what if” scenario planning.

  • Harmonize your data to get insights from one single source of truth to compare and align consumer activity, retail consumption, shipment information, trade spend and more.

  • Improve forecasting, supply chain and spend management by unlocking and sharing insights with rich, interactive reports and visual analytics.

  • Enable ad hoc reporting to discover even more efficiencies.

  • Tap into advanced analytics that translate raw trade spend data into visible, actionable guidance for business unit leaders.

Empower your business with TELUS Trade Promotion Management

Our software can give your business a competitive advantage in the fast moving consumer goods industry with advanced tools that you can leverage to improve profitability, visibility, agility and responsiveness. It’s ideal for your business if you want to help reduce waste, improve efficiency, boost your bottom line and take on less trade-spend risk.

Thanks to our unique expertise and strategic acquisitions of key SaaS companies like Blacksmith Applications, we’re able to deliver the best solutions possible to CPG companies around the world. You can rely on our tools and services to deftly plan, analyze and profit from your trade promotions. 

Looking for strategies to convince your team to adopt trade promotion management tools? We’re here to help.

If your business is ready to invest in industry leading software that can increase your ROI, enhance and optimize your trade promotion management, improve your promotional activities and outcomes and boost your bottom line, the team at TELUS Consumer Goods is here to help power your growth. 

Get inspired

Discover how Bayer achieved global success in trade promotion management.

Explore More