Today I visited an old friend, Lucas, a Hong Kong native, refined and courteous, who has worked at Fortune 500 companies like Master Kong, P&G, and Unilever, and now serves as the sales director at a mainland private enterprise. Just as I reached his office door, I heard what sounded like an argument inside. Moments later, a man stormed out with a dark expression. Upon entering, I found Lucas still fuming. Upon inquiry, I learned that the man who just left was the sales head for the Northern region, and the two had clashed over marketing expenses. In Q3, the Northern region had invested 2.8 million yuan in terminal promotions and terminal image production, and the annual rebate ratio had been increasing year over year, with the investment ratio 20% higher than in Q2. However, business growth was sluggish, and net profit after expenses was even on a downward trend. Regarding the rising rebate ratio, the regional head's response was that channel costs were increasing annually, and customers demanded higher rebates from the manufacturer; to maintain market share, high investment was necessary. However, upon reviewing the promotional rebate agreements, it was discovered that some documents lacked the counterparty's seal. The sales representative claimed the client had no official seal, so only a signature was obtained. Further investigation revealed that some clients were completely unaware of the company's rebate policies. Some promotional activities were not executed as planned, and the funds for promotional materials, gifts, and temporary promoters during activities were unaccounted for. Does this scenario sound familiar? Most companies encounter these issues in expense management: 1. Fraud in the middle, siphoning off promotional funds; 2. Long verification cycles, causing cash flow pressure for distributors; 3. Massive terminal data, making manual checks labor-intensive, inefficient, and costly to manage; 4. Weak expense control, with applications disconnected from budgets and verification, data not forming a closed loop, and processes hard to govern. The root cause of these problems is the lack of "online expense management." Enterprises urgently need to innovate their marketing expense management. By making the investment, execution, verification, write-off, and payment of market activity expenses online, the authenticity of activities is ensured, and the return on investment is guaranteed. So how does online expense management help enterprises manage marketing expenses effectively? -01- Ensuring Activity Authenticity Authentic Activity Execution: Integrated with the SFA system, once an expense application is approved, the activity message is pushed directly to frontline sales reps and automatically added to their visit steps, requiring them to provide evidence of terminal expense execution. When a salesperson encounters a store with expense investment during a visit, the Field Force 365 mobile app reminds them to report the activity. All uploaded photos are taken and uploaded in real-time, not selectable from the album, and carry a watermark, ensuring the activity is genuinely executed. This can be supplemented by dual checks—supervisor offline audits and back-office online reviews—to guarantee high-quality execution. Authentic Expense Applications: The e-contract function moves the signing of terminal promotional agreements from offline to online. E-agreements are sent directly to the terminal, and all signature steps are authenticated with real-name verification, ensuring contract authenticity. -02- Improving Activity Efficiency Verification Efficiency: Through AI image recognition technology, the system can automatically determine compliance based on display standards, supporting different display projects with separate standards, thereby improving review efficiency. Additionally, duplicate photo detection and automatic filtering of low-quality photos ensure the validity of all uploaded activity photos, enhancing the reviewer's efficiency. Field Force 365 has been continuously advancing in using AI to boost efficiency for FMCG enterprises, and its AI intelligent platform has served numerous FMCG companies, creating immeasurable value for clients. Write-off Efficiency: Since the TPM and SFA systems are interconnected, execution data is directly linked to TPM, significantly shortening the write-off cycle. It also supports settlement types corresponding to various payment methods (e.g., product subsidies, invoice deductions, order discounts). A single application can be written off multiple times, with no over-write-off allowed; once the full application amount is written off, the application is terminated, improving write-off efficiency. -03- Ensuring Activity Rationality Reasonable Budgeting: The initial budget is automatically generated based on targets, with rates set for each expense category. The system can automatically calculate this portion of the budget based on conditions such as sales amount, shipment amount, or purchase amount, rather than relying on sales or finance staff to calculate and enter each item manually. Higher sales lead to higher expenses, reducing manual intervention and ensuring the rationality of budget preparation. Reasonable Expense Applications: Rules control expense applications, such as preventing the same store from applying for the same activity repeatedly, or applying for multiple activities in the same period, ensuring every application is compliant and reasonable. Reasonable Expense Approval: The approval process shows expense details, with instant reminders if the applied expense exceeds the budget. An expense profile provides rich decision-making basis, including but not limited to: customer budget, available expense balance, expected expense-to-sales ratio, and expected sales volume. Based on this data, a decision model can be built, and the system automatically provides intelligent approval suggestions. Reasonable Expense Write-off: The traditional method of distributors bringing paper materials to the manufacturer for write-off not only has a long cycle but also risks disputes if materials are lost. With all activities online, write-offs correspond one-to-one with applications, automatically pulling up expense results, agreement execution, verification status, and payment status, making it clear whether the expense is reasonable and whether it should be written off. The essence of business is efficiency improvement. Inefficient expense usage has hindered sales performance growth. By purchasing a mature marketing activity and expense control (TPM) system, enterprises can achieve online expense management, ensuring the authenticity of market activities, improving activity efficiency, and ensuring activity rationality, helping enterprises reduce costs and increase efficiency. By the way, in the end, I recommended Lucas to choose Field Force 365. Scan the QR code to register and experience it now Tips provided will be paid 400-2000 yuan upon adoption