Retailers and CPGs invest more than $500 billion in trade every year. Yet much of that investment is still planned, negotiated, executed, and reconciled across disconnected systems — leaving both sides working from different numbers on the same deal.
That was the central theme of our recent Commercial Trade Intelligence webinar with Progressive Grocer. The discussion wasn’t about adding another AI tool or digitizing existing processes. It was about rethinking how retailers and suppliers work together — and why a shared commercial foundation is becoming essential as margins tighten and expectations rise.
Here are the five biggest takeaways from the conversation.
1. The Problem Isn't Trade Spend. It's Trade Visibility.
At the start of the session, we asked attendees to think about the last promotion they planned, negotiated, approved, or accepted — and whether both organizations were truly aligned:
- Were both organizations working from the same fund balance?
- Did both sides agree on expected lift?
- Were they aligned on execution?
- When the promotion ended, did everyone arrive at the same financial outcome?
For many organizations, the answer is no — not because people aren’t collaborating, but because collaboration happens across disconnected systems, spreadsheets, emails, and manual processes. Every handoff creates another opportunity for information to drift apart.
The result is familiar: delayed approvals, disputed deductions, fund leakage, slower settlements, and missed opportunities to optimize trade investments. The challenge isn’t a lack of data — it’s a lack of shared visibility.
2. Commercial Trade Intelligence Creates a Shared Commercial Foundation
Most trade promotion management technology was designed for one side of the relationship. Retailers optimize merchandising, pricing, and promotions. CPGs manage trade funds, customer planning, and financial performance.
Commercial Trade Intelligence takes a different approach, creating a bilateral platform where both organizations work from the same commercial intelligence across the full trade lifecycle:
- Planning
- Funding
- Deal execution
- Performance
- Reconciliation
Instead of maintaining separate versions of the truth, both parties collaborate using the same deal information, fund balances, forecasts, approvals, and financial outcomes. That changes the conversation: instead of debating what happened, teams can focus on improving what happens next.
3. AI Becomes More Valuable When It Sees Both Sides
Artificial intelligence is quickly becoming part of every enterprise application — but AI is only as valuable as the information it can access. An AI assistant that sees only retailer data, or only supplier data, can summarize information and automate individual tasks, and little more.
Commercial Trade Intelligence gives AI visibility across the entire commercial relationship. That allows it to:
- Identify mismatches before promotions launch
- Surface risks during negotiations
- Recommend next best actions
- Monitor live execution
- Simplify reconciliation after promotions conclude
Rather than acting as another chatbot, agentic AI becomes an active participant throughout the trade lifecycle.
4. Better Visibility Leads to Better Business Outcomes
Throughout the webinar, the discussion stayed focused on measurable business value rather than technology alone. Customers have reported outcomes including:
These improvements aren’t driven by increasing trade investment. They’re achieved by improving visibility, reducing manual work, and enabling retailers and CPGs to make better decisions from shared information.
As discussed during the session, the question from leadership is rarely “How do we spend more?” It’s usually “How do we generate better outcomes from the trade dollars we’re already investing?”
5. The Differentiator Isn't Just AI. It's the Network.
AI alone isn’t enough to transform trade collaboration. What makes Commercial Trade Intelligence different is the foundation it’s built on.
For more than two decades, DemandTec has helped retailers optimize pricing, promotions, markdowns, and demand planning — while building a network of more than 7,800 supplier connections. Commercial Trade Intelligence extends that existing ecosystem rather than creating another disconnected application.
The same deal a supplier funds becomes the same deal a retailer prices and executes. Planning, execution, intelligence, and reconciliation are connected through a shared data model, creating a closed-loop commercial process from beginning to end. That network effect is difficult to replicate — and it’s what makes bilateral collaboration possible at scale.
The Future of Retailer–CPG Collaboration
For decades, retailers and CPGs have optimized their own businesses independently. The next evolution is optimizing the commercial relationship itself.
Commercial Trade Intelligence represents that shift, connecting planning, execution, intelligence, and reconciliation into one shared platform where both organizations collaborate from the same information. When retailers and suppliers work from the same source of truth, AI becomes more powerful, decisions become faster, reconciliation becomes simpler, and trade investments deliver stronger business outcomes.
Whether you’re beginning to explore AI, evaluating new trade technologies, or modernizing your commercial processes, Commercial Trade Intelligence offers a new way to connect retailers and CPGs around one shared commercial foundation.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Retailers and CPGs invest more than $500 billion in trade every year, but the real constraint isn't how much they spend — it's the lack of shared visibility, because planning, execution, and settlement live in disconnected systems that drift apart at every handoff. The fix isn't more reporting; it's a single bilateral platform where both sides work from the same deal data, fund balances, forecasts, and financial outcomes across planning, funding, execution, performance, and reconciliation. With visibility across the full relationship, agentic AI becomes an active participant — flagging mismatches, surfacing risks, and automating reconciliation rather than just summarizing one side's data. The result is measurable: up to an 80% reduction in Joint Business Planning cycle time, up to a 35% reduction in fund leakage, and settlement cycles accelerated by as much as 45 days — achieved by improving visibility, not by spending more. Built on more than two decades of demand science and a network of 7,800+ supplier connections, that closed-loop, bilateral architecture is Commercial Trade Intelligence.
FAQ Section
Commercial Trade Intelligence is a bilateral platform that connects retailers and their CPG partners on one shared data layer, so both sides plan, fund, execute, and reconcile every promotion from the same information. Instead of maintaining separate versions of the truth across spreadsheets and disconnected systems, the same deal a supplier funds becomes the same deal a retailer prices and executes — connected from co-planning through settlement.
It isn’t a lack of data — the data exists. The problem is that planning, execution, and settlement happen in separate systems that were never designed to connect, so every handoff between retailer and supplier creates another chance for information to drift apart. By the time a quarterly review arrives, both sides are often reconstructing what happened from memory and spreadsheets rather than a shared source of truth.
Most trade promotion management tools were built for one side of the relationship — retailers optimize pricing and promotions, while CPGs manage trade funds and customer planning. Commercial Trade Intelligence is bilateral: both organizations work from the same deal data, fund balances, and financial outcomes, which removes the reconciliation gaps and disputed deductions that single-sided systems create.
AI is only as valuable as the data it can see, and an assistant limited to one side of the relationship can do little more than summarize. With visibility across the entire commercial relationship, agentic AI can identify mismatches before promotions launch, surface risks during negotiation, recommend next best actions, monitor live execution, and simplify reconciliation afterward — acting throughout the trade lifecycle rather than behaving like another chatbot.
Customers have reported up to an 80% reduction in Joint Business Planning cycle time, up to a 35% reduction in fund leakage, and settlement cycles accelerated by as much as 45 days. These gains don’t come from increasing trade investment — they come from improving visibility, reducing manual work, and letting retailers and CPGs make better decisions from shared information.
