3 Most Important Reports for Promotion Evaluation


Numerous reports are needed for reporting, analysis and forecasting purposes.  At SPAR we have found about 40 reports and graphs will cover almost every situation.  But building a system to produce 40 reports is excessive and requires time and money.  I am going to outline the three most important core reports/graphs needed and if these three can be produced any remaining reports can be developed as time allows.
 

  1. Individual Promotion Profit & Loss -  Nothing can be done until a P&L can be produced by Promotion.  This will allow the analyst to establish credibility.  Until the individual P&L can be reviewed and accepted as accurate, any summary or further analysis is just GIGO.  Having the P&L by promotion will also allow a great deal of learning.  Once the P&L for each Promotion exists then the results can be put into a database and analysis and reporting across time, promotions, types of promotions and brands can be summarized without much problem.
  2. Weekly Graph - Graph showing actual sales and SPARLINE with the units sold on promotion separately identified.  It is reasonable to ask why a graph is needed when the data already exists.   Many senior managers will not the take time to study the details.  Everything is seen quickly and clearly with a graph.  In this case it is true that a picture is worth a thousand words (or numbers).
  3. Summary Stats - a page showing details of the analysis including such items as the correlation between variables, the allocation of incremental volume by promotion variable, and all the other statistics to determine if the modeling is working.  This is necessary for the model builder and analyst to determine how accurate the results are and would not normally be shared with users.  The analyst must determine if the model is working accurately, and if not, what needs to be changed to be able to confidently report to management which results are solid and which are directional.


A credible and usable analysis of promotions is possible with these three reports.  If these reports are credible it is likely additional requests will follow but once the value is proven, the resources will exist to develop whatever is needed.