How trade marketers can swap spreadsheet grind for strategic growth.

For FMCG brands navigating volatile input costs, shifting retailer loyalties, and intense volume pressures, trade promotion is the single largest lever for driving growth. Yet, for many marketing and commercial teams, it’s also the most significant drain on time.

70 per cent of FMCG promotions fail to break even. Despite this, trade marketers find themselves trapped in manual data extraction: logging into retailer portals, downloading spreadsheets, cleaning data, stitching it together.

The bottleneck here is not a lack of data – it’s the speed to insights.

Moving from reactive analysis to proactive strategy

AI is changing this, however. Embracing automated, intelligent systems is no longer a futuristic concept – it’s a rapidly accelerating industry standard.

Recent data reveals that 71 per cent of CPG leaders have now adopted AI in at least one business function, and 56 per cent of CPG leaders are now regularly using generative AI.

By integrating AI into their existing processes, trade marketers can move away from rigid dashboards and treat promotional datasets as active strategic partners.

Empowering teams with conversational AI

TELUS TPM with AI Assistant revolutionises how commercial and marketing teams interact with data, targeting the friction points where time and revenue are lost:

• Maximise retail trade spend impact. The AI-driven platform captures hidden growth by surfacing profitable trends and execution gaps across retail channels.
• Eliminate the manual grind. By handling the heavy lifting of data processing, the AI Assistant frees marketers from spreadsheets, allowing them to focus on creative strategy and retailer relationships.
• Scale team expertise. Our intelligence layer understands the nuances of trade promotion, enabling every team member to make expert-level decisions.

As the grocery landscape grows more competitive, automated efficiency has become vital. FMCG manufacturers that move away from manual administration and invest in comprehensive, AI-native trade promotion solutions today will be those best positioned to protect their margins, satisfy retail partners, and capture growth opportunities that others miss.

About TELUS Agriculture & Consumer Goods

TELUS serves 15 of the top 20 CPG companies globally with over 25 years of FMCG expertise across more than 300 customers in 70 countries. We are committed to expanding our integrated software ecosystem, delivering standard-setting trade promotion management, retail execution, and revenue growth management solutions that empower global brands to plan to profit on a single, secure platform.