A trade promotion might mean a temporary price cut, a display fee or a rebate tied to a retailer hitting a volume target, and a single consumer goods company can be running hundreds of these at once across different retail chains. TPM software tracks the budget for each promotion, routes it for approval and compares planned spend against what the promotion actually earned back in sales.
The common problem it solves is not the promotion itself but the reconciliation afterward, since retailer deductions for promotions frequently do not match what a manufacturer approved. The misconception is treating TPM as a marketing tool alone. Getting it right also depends on clean data from the ERP and an agreed system of record for retailer agreements.