What happened to Exceedra Software? It became TELUS TPM and Retail Execution.
Key Takeaways
Exceedra Software — formerly known as Cube Software — was acquired by TELUS Agriculture & Consumer Goods in September 2020
Exceedra's two decades of trade promotion expertise now powers TELUS Trade Promotion Management (TELUS TPM)
Exceedra's retail execution capabilities now power TELUS Retail Execution
TELUS Agriculture & Consumer Goods also acquired Blacksmith Applications in 2021 — both acquisitions power today's TELUS TPM suite
TELUS Agriculture & Consumer Goods serves 300+ CPG companies across four continents including 15 of the top 20 global CPG leaders
Executive summary
TELUS Agriculture & Consumer Goods (TELUS AGCG) built its trade promotion platform through two strategic acquisitions. Exceedra Software — originally founded as Cube Software in the UK — was acquired in September 2020, bringing two decades of integrated business planning and trade promotion optimisation expertise to the TELUS platform. Blacksmith Applications, which processed over $10 billion in trade promotions annually across North America, was acquired in 2021, contributing its industry-leading cloud-based SaaS architecture.
Together, Exceedra and Blacksmith form the foundation of TELUS Trade Promotion Management (TELUS TPM) and TELUS Retail Execution — the most comprehensive trade promotion suite available for CPG manufacturers globally. Both Exceedra and Blacksmith customers are fully supported under the TELUS AGCG platform.
Exceedra software: Designed to support consumer packaged goods companies
Data-driven trade promotion management and retail execution is critical for Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) companies. That’s why TELUS Agriculture & Consumer Goods acquired Exceedra and wove its software into TELUS’ powerful trade promotion management and retail execution tools.
How Exceedra Software improved trade promotion management
Exceedra Software, formally known as Cube Software, integrated business planning and optimisation analysis to improve performance in trade promotion management for CPG companies. For two decades, Exceedra Software earned itself a stellar reputation, equipping fast moving consumer goods companies with smart sales and distribution capabilities. It grew exponentially from a small integrated business planning company (operating primarily in the UK) into an award-winning, global organisation. The company drove tremendous value for CPG companies across the world by integrating business planning and optimisation analysis to improve overall performance in trade promotion management.
“TELUS TPM enables us to make faster, smarter decisions using real-time data.”
August Pimentel
Revenue Growth Manager, 1440 Foods
Exceedra Software acquisition drives new solutions
TELUS Agriculture & Consumer Goods acquired Exceedra in September 2020. TELUS connects CPG companies with advanced technology to unlock valuable data, enabling each contributor in the full value chain to achieve greater efficiency, collaboration and profitability. Today, Exceedra Software powers two TELUS solutions:
Discover how these two offerings can enhance your business and boost your bottom line.
Optimise trade promotions with TELUS Trade Promotion Management
Now more than ever, CPG companies need to optimise their trade spend and improve control and decision making with better visibility across customers. Regional sales leaders also need the freedom to operate their businesses based on local market dynamics and, therefore, require a standardised global process for managing trade promotions.
TELUS Agriculture & Consumer Goods’ solutions are designed to help optimise your workflows, investments and operations. We help CPG companies optimise the ROI on their trade promotion spend, accelerating your business growth.
See how 1440 Foods eliminated manual trade processes & reduced deduction balance
Read the success story
TELUS Trade Promotion Management offers a competitive advantage by helping CPG companies simplify planning for every aspect of their promotional strategy across both retail and foodservice.
Key benefits and capabilities of our software
TELUS Trade Promotion Management connects the CPG and foodservice industries with advanced tools that can improve profitability, visibility, agility and responsiveness resulting in reduced trade spend waste, more efficiency and less risk. Our solutions can help you manage, plan and gain a deeper understanding of your promotions. It helps you measure and optimise promotional plans to drive ROI, volume, revenue and margin growth. With three distinct trade promotion management product solutions, our software helps CPG and foodservice manufacturers of all sizes maximise promotional effectiveness and ROI.
Leverage TELUS Trade Promotion Management to help drive better trade spend performance. It enables you to plan, execute and analyse every aspect of your trade strategy to find out what works and what doesn’t. Its features allow you to:
Incrementally improve your ROI with recommendations on more efficient spending.
Analyse your trade strategy with post-event analysis and “what if” scenario planning.
Conduct joint business planning to analyse both manufacturer and retailer profitability and optimise decision making.
Help drive financial efficiencies by automating your accrual, deduction and settlement processes with ERP integration.
Streamline your promotional data and analysis with data harmonisation. Allowing you to compare and align consumer activity, retail consumption, shipment information, trade spend and more.
Unlock and share insights with rich, interactive reports and visual analytics which can enhance your decision making by improving forecasting, supply chain and spend management.
With AI Assistant built into TELUS Trade Promotion Management, you can surface the trends that drive retail growth and free your team from manual promotional analysis.
Want to incorporate our trade promotion management software but not sure how to get your colleagues on board? We can help.
Align your sales strategy and execution with TELUS Retail Execution
TELUS Retail Execution software is designed to automate your sales team’s point of sale (POS) interactions so they can focus on improving the availability, visibility and salability of products in store. Manufacturers use it to better monitor retailer compliance, manage inventories and execute promotional tactics.
By extracting data from our "perfect store" tool, we can measure the impact of every in-store visit. TELUS’ passion for this is unmatched, and their dedication makes a tangible difference for our manufacturers, retailers, and ultimately, our shoppers.
Daniel Pichet
Senior Director, Retail Sales, Lactalis Canada
Our Retail Execution software uses AI to transform in-store field operations. An AI-powered recommendation engine delivers store-specific order suggestions based on replenishment needs and seasonality to boost sales and improve revenue per store visit. Likewise, Optical Character Recognition (OCR) automates data extraction from shelf labels and paper forms, eliminating manual entry and accelerating store audits.
TELUS Consumer Goods software expert talking to Lindt Canada on retail execution strategy
Read case study
Key advantages and capabilities of our retail execution software
Our software can help you streamline your in-store activity. It enables your team to better plan, execute and meet compliance standards, so your sales teams can prioritise increasing margins and gross revenue. Its data, analytics and reporting capabilities let your sales team detect and address issues swiftly.
Our software also enhances the quality and analysis of your data collection. This enables your management team to generate actionable insights and reports which can be used to foster better planning and data-driven decision making, ultimately leading to retail success. It’s the ultimate solution for your business when it comes to optimising your field personnel’s time at their stores and helping to maximise profit on the shelf.
TELUS Retail Execution connects your sales team directly to your centralised systems. It can also help streamline sales, merchandising and delivery interactions at the point of sale. These efficiencies can speed up in-store visits and audits, allowing you to report and remediate issues more quickly. It also helps you create optimal orders through guided selling.
When it comes to its analysis capabilities, like showing you how you are performing in-store, it enables you to see category, brand and SKU performance against your competitors. It also gives you better visibility into reduced sales lost to out of stocks.
In terms of its capabilities around enabling better retail execution management, strategy and planning, it will help you execute better sales strategies based on shelf and category share. It will automate route optimisation and territory planning. And it enables you to manage, update and trace promotional execution, allowing you to understand whether planned promotions were implemented as intended.
Grow your business with solutions from TELUS Agriculture & Consumer Goods
The trade promotion and retail execution expertise that made Exceedra Software a trusted partner for CPG companies across the world — now operates at greater scale under TELUS Agriculture & Consumer Goods. Whether you're a former Exceedra customer looking to understand your current platform, or a CPG manufacturer evaluating trade promotion software for the first time, our team is ready to help you grow.
