Activision wins big with efficient trade promotions planning

For more than 30 years, Activision has been changing the way people play. But over those years, the company’s retail execution and trade promotions planning had grown inefficient and error-prone. Planning teams were bogged down in gathering information and importing data into various systems. Real-time reporting and ad hoc analysis were nearly nonexistent, and it was very difficult to accurately forecast across the organization. All planning was managed across multiple tools and spreadsheets, creating a risk of errors and data corruption.

Activision (also known as Activision Blizzard) implemented the Anaplan platform to manage trade promotion planning and management, known as “retail execution” at the company, and encompassed promotional discounts, shelving space, and other spending that supports sales. Activision now manages every product launch and product discount using the Anaplan platform, and they use custom reports to provide relevant stakeholders with real-time, transparent access to any data they need.

Activision achieved tremendous boosts in productivity and collaboration with the Anaplan platform. Just two weeks after go-live, the planning team estimated a 50% increase in productivity. “Anaplan is … making information easier to understand, and allowing people to act more quickly,” one finance manager noted. With a unified data source for all trade promotion efforts, the process is more efficient and reliable. Planners have replaced spreadsheets with real-time reporting and now have complete confidence in the data.

Each of the groups involved in Activision’s trade management process—sales, marketing, finance, and accounting—engages with planning data differently, and Anaplan made it very easy to tailor views to each group’s individual perspectives. That, in turn, has led to faster analysis and more transparency. An Activision finance manager put it best: “Anaplan has given us the power to answer any question that an executive or other department may ask, and now we can really speak in detail about where we’re spending our money.”