Promotions in the GDO: A success story in the management of promotions

The customer is a leader of the Italian large-scale retail trade who expressed the need to create an IT process that would allow the management of promotional initiatives starting from the definition of the draft of the promotional package up to the definition of the participating stores and the determination of the relative prices on sale.


We have analyzed and designed the entire process based on the following phases:


- Definition of the items/shops involved in the promotion

- Definition of sale/transfer prices

- Control and communication of the promotion

- Creation of related commercial offers


We have therefore created an application that implements the phases described above.


PHASE 1: Definition of the items/shops involved in the promotion

During the items definition phase, the user is supported to the choice through the commercial information view linked to the items set up:

  • suppliers as reference point
  • purchase prices
  • related EAN code
  • image and flyer layout
  • maximum number of days on promotion 


PHASE 2: Definition of sale/transfer prices

During the definition of sale/transfer prices phase have been realized some automatisms that can simplify the definition of the sale prices:

  • visualization of the lower price of sale in comparison to all the shops involved
  • automatic calculation of the price compared to the margin established
  • automatic calculation of the discount in cash compared to the established price.


PHASE 3: Control and communication of the promotion

During the check phase, the app allows to:

  • do transversal analysis of items/supplier promotion (Slicing)
  • identify any price conflicting with average category balance


During the communication phase the app allows to inform about the promotion:

  • suppliers involved in the established definition of items to promote
  • warehouse office to plan order and to optimize inventories
  • advertising agency to create flyer
  • the franchising shops to access to the promotional initiatives

PHASE 4 Creation of related commercial offers

Selecting any promotion the app creates automatically all the offers linked to the items and to shops already involved in the established format to inform of the same shops of the variations occurred.


The project implementation included:

  • an initial phase of analysis shared with client.
  • the drafting of a technical specification document.
  • application development through scheduled meetings with the client to explore progression steps.


THE GO LIVE: The transition to the production environment was made once the implementation and testing of the first three phases was completed, which already provided the client with considerable benefits over the previous solution. The fourth phase has been added later. 



Implementing this application the client owns a tool allowing:

  • a reduction of work load by the commercial offices
  • control and optimize the operational margin onto offered prices
  • the possibility to check the positioning and sales of the items sold with promotion
  • centralization of communications related to promotions implemented.