Blacksmith Applications is now TELUS Trade Promotion Management for CPG
Key takeaways
Blacksmith Applications was acquired by TELUS Agriculture & Consumer Goods in 2021
Blacksmith processed over $10 billion in trade promotions annually before acquisition
Blacksmith's SaaS platform is now the core architecture of TELUS Trade Promotion Management (TELUS TPM)
TELUS AGCG also acquired Exceedra Software in 2020 — both acquisitions power today's TELUS TPM suite
TELUS TPM serves CPG and foodservice manufacturers globally with trade promotion planning, optimization, execution and analytics
Executive summary
TELUS Agriculture & Consumer Goods (TELUS AGCG) built its trade promotion platform through two strategic acquisitions. Exceedra Software — formerly known as Cube Software — was acquired in September 2020, bringing two decades of trade promotion management expertise originally developed in the UK. Blacksmith Applications, which processed over $10 billion in trade promotions annually across North America, was acquired in 2021, contributing its industry-leading SaaS architecture and cloud-based trade management ecosystem.
Together, these two platforms form the foundation of TELUS Trade Promotion Management (TELUS TPM) and TELUS Retail Execution — the most comprehensive trade promotion suite available for CPG manufacturers. Both Exceedra and Blacksmith customers are fully supported under the TELUS AGCG platform.
What happened to Blacksmith Applications? It became TELUS 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’ platform acquired and repurposed
TELUS Agriculture & 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 Agriculture & Consumer Goods.
Today, we connect customers with advanced technology to enhance the collective potential of the consumer goods industry. TELUS Agriculture & 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 Agriculture & 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. With AI Assistant built into TELUS Trade Promotion Management, you can also surface the trends that drive retail growth and provide expert-level decision-making to every member of your team.
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.
Drive growth for your business through data-driven decision making.
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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.1
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.
"Hi! Here it is: TELUS Trade Promotion Management completely shifted my workload. Instead of manually processing every claim, I now focus on the strategic rebill process where we’re recovering significant revenue."
Karen Holansky
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.
Walk into retailer meetings with shared P&L data — so every conversation is a growth conversation, not a negotiation.
Reduce analysis time from one week to 30 minutes — as ACH Food Companies did after implementing TELUS TPM.
Run profitable promotions with your retailers and improve your promotion strategies and promotion plan with post-event analysis and “what if” scenario planning.
Stop switching between systems. One platform connects trade spend, shipment data and retail consumption — so your team spends time on strategy, not spreadsheets.
"Improve forecast accuracy by 25–30% — with a single connected view of trade spend, volume and margin across every customer.
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.
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
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.
The same expertise that made Blacksmith Applications the industry's most trusted trade spend platform — processing over $10 billion in promotions annually — now powers TELUS TPM. Whether you're a former Blacksmith customer looking to understand your current platform, or a CPG manufacturer evaluating trade promotion software for the first time, our team is here to help.
See how 1440 Foods eliminated manual trade processes & reduced deduction balance
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