DEMANDTEC TRADE INTELLIGENCE
The trade fund engine for retail.
One ledger. Both sides. Every dollar.
Trade dollars are the second-largest cost on a CPG P&L — and the most-leveraged margin tool a retailer has. Most are managed across spreadsheets, retailer portals, and email threads. DemandTec Trade Intelligence is the engine where 7,800+ CPG partners and 120+ retail banners commit, execute, and reconcile every dollar — together, in real time.
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What is trade fund collaboration?
It’s how retailers and suppliers agree on the dollars that fund every promotion — and how those dollars get tracked, executed and settled. Done well, it’s the most leveraged margin lever in retail. Done in spreadsheets and email, it’s where most of the value leaks out.
Trade fund
noun · /treɪd fʌnd/
Money a CPG supplier sets aside to support a retailer’s promotion of its products — through temporary price reductions, features, displays, and digital placements. (Sometimes called trade promotion funds or co-op dollars.)
IN PLAIN LANGUAGE
A simple example
A grocer wants to feature a coffee brand at $7.99 next month. The supplier agrees to fund the markdown — say $1.20 per unit — to drive volume. The grocer plans the event, the supplier confirms the dollars, the offer hits stores, and at the end of the period both sides reconcile what was sold versus what was funded.
Multiply that by thousands of items, hundreds of stores, dozens of suppliers and four planning cycles a year. The math gets unmanageable fast.
The hard part isn’t planning a promotion. It’s keeping pricing, promo, supplier and finance all looking at the same numbers — at the same time.
WHY IT MATTERS NOW
Trade dollars are the second-largest cost on a CPG P&L — and the most fragmented.
For most retailers and suppliers, the work of agreeing, tracking and reconciling those dollars still lives in spreadsheets, PDFs and email threads. Three patterns repeat:
PATTERN 01
Plans and prices drift apart.
The promotion the merchant plans, the deal the supplier confirms and the price the shopper sees rarely match by the time the event hits stores. Margin leaks in every gap.
PATTERN 02
Funds disappear into spreadsheets.
Without a shared system of record, neither side has clean visibility into what was committed, what was spent and what was earned — so reconciliation drags on for weeks.
PATTERN 03
The programs that worked don't get funded twice.
Suppliers fund events without seeing what moved. Retailers plan the next cycle without knowing which trade dollars actually drove volume. The best-performing programs get defunded. The rest get renewed. Nobody knows until the quarter closes.
THE LIFECYCLE
Four stages. One shared workflow.
Trade Intelligence runs the full lifecycle — from the first cost change through final settlement — with both the retailer and the CPG supplier working from the same data at every stage.
Connect
Live cost feeds, new-item submissions and offer windows flow between systems — no more PDFs and re-keying.
RETAILER sees current cost & offers
SUPPLIER publishes deals once
Collaborate
Both sides build the promotion calendar together — comparing offers, modeling lift and aligning on supplier-funded events.
RETAILER co-plans events
SUPPLIER commits funds in context
Execute
Approved offers flow directly into pricing, promotions, and markdowns — so the price on the shelf matches the deal that was signed. No version drift. No manual re-entry.
RETAILER executes price & circular
SUPPLIER tracks live execution
Reconcile
Performance, funds spent and outstanding accruals are auto-reconciled — closing the loop and feeding the next plan.
RETAILER closes promotion period
SUPPLIER sees clean settlement
NETWORK ADVANTAGE
The network is the moat.
Every connection makes the next one stronger.
DemandTec Trade Intelligence is the only platform with a live bilateral network connecting retailers and their CPG supplier base in the same software. Once you're on the network, every new partner you connect is an order-of-magnitude faster to onboard and activate.
CPG & broker partners already on-network
Your suppliers don’t need a new login — most already operate inside DemandTec. Onboarding time becomes weeks, not quarters.
Retail banners trading deals daily
Across grocery, drug, mass and specialty — retailers get a working benchmark of what good deals look like in their category.
Years of demand science behind every trade decision
Trade fund commitments are grounded in the same demand model that drives DemandTec pricing — 25 years of calibration across 120+ retail environments
WHAT YOU GET
A complete trade-fund operating system.
Configurable to where you are today — and the workflows you’ll need next.
Every offer type. One ledger.
CPG trade, national, and retailer-initiated offers flow in continuously and become structured records — not email attachments. Every party works from the same data.
Joint planning. One shared calendar.
Build the promotion calendar with your supplier base — compare offers in context, model lift, and align on funded events before they go to shelf.
Live data. No re-keying.
New-item submissions and cost changes flow in standardized formats — replacing spreadsheets across the supplier base. The 10+ hours a week your team spends on data entry today drops to minutes.
Every dollar tracked. Every period closed clean.
Live view of accruals, commitments, and earned funds — auto-reconciled to actual sell-through at period close. Disputes flagged before they age.
Prove ROI at the event level.
Cause-level lift and ROI on every supplier-funded event, grounded in 25+ years of demand modeling. Data to refund the programs that worked — and reallocate from the ones that didn't.
The deal you signed. The price on the shelf. Finally the same.
DemandTec Trade Intelligence is wired directly into DemandTec Pricing, Promotions, and Markdowns — one data model, no version drift between what was agreed and what hits the shelf. This is the capability no standalone trade tool or two-vendor integration can replicate.
WHO IT'S BUILT FOR
It works because both sides win.
Run promotions where the dollars
and the shelf finally agree.
Plan with your supplier base in view, execute with
confidence, and close every period clean.
- Capture deals from suppliers, brokers, and distributors in one system
- Tie funded promotions directly to the price plan
- Auto-reconcile accruals at period close
Bring better deals to the retailers
you sell into.
Submit, co-plan and track every program in one place
— and see the sell-through that earned the funds.
- One workflow across the DemandTec retailer network
- Live sell-through & performance visibility
- Cleaner finance close on funds and deductions
- Fewer spreadsheets, more strategy time
READY WHEN YOU ARE
Take control of
every trade dollar
We'll walk through your categories, your supplier base, and your reconciliation workflow — and show exactly where Trade Intelligence closes the gap against your real numbers. The displacement window is open.