What Is the POI Panorama Report and Why It’s So Important for Consumer Goods Leaders

What Is the POI Panorama Report and Why It’s So Important for Consumer Goods Leaders

Every autumn, commercial leaders across consumer goods look to one report to understand where trade planning and retail execution technology is heading. The POI Panorama has become the industry’s reference point for evaluating software vendors, and with the 2026 edition arriving this week, it’s worth explaining what the report is, how it works, and why it matters so much to the people who use it.

Who is the Promotion Optimization Institute?

POI is an industry organisation that brings together manufacturers, retailers, solution providers, analysts and academics with a shared goal: improving how consumer goods are planned, promoted and executed. It was founded by Michael Kantor, who continues to lead POI as Founder and CEO, and whose vision of collaboration between manufacturers and retailers runs through everything the organisation does.

The Panorama itself is led by Pam Brown, POI’s Chief Commercial Officer. Pam brings decades of hands-on CPG experience to the research, including senior sales operations, trade promotion and IT leadership roles at Del Monte Foods, and she has been part of POI’s leadership since 2018. That practitioner background shows in the report: it asks the questions a commercial team would ask, not just the ones a technologist would.

Pam is supported by POI Affiliate Sarah Meyer, whose deep experience in trade management and TPM implementation helps shape the Enterprise Planning evaluation, and by Jack Harnedy, EVP Commercial Operations & Industry Research. Together, the team puts an enormous amount of work into evaluating dozens of platforms each year, and the industry is better informed because of it.

Alongside the Panorama, POI runs its annual State of the Industry research, which benchmarks how CPG companies are investing in people, process and technology.

What is the POI Panorama?

The POI Panorama, formally the POI Consumer Goods Enterprise Planning & Retail Execution Vendor Panorama, is an annual research report published by the Promotion Optimization Institute (POI). It evaluates the software vendors that support trade promotion management, revenue growth management and retail execution, helping manufacturers understand which solutions best fit their organisation.

What does the POI Panorama evaluate?

The report covers two connected areas. Enterprise Planning (EPx) includes trade promotion management, pre and post event analytics, revenue growth management, integrated business planning and, increasingly, artificial intelligence. Retail Execution (RetX) covers the in-store side of the promotion cycle: the field sales, merchandising and order capture work that turns a plan into results on shelf.

For eight years POI published these as two separate reports. In 2024 it combined them into a single Panorama, recognising that planning and execution work best when they’re connected. It was a forward-looking decision that reflects where the industry is going.

Why is the POI Panorama so important for consumer goods leaders?

Choosing trade planning or retail execution software is one of the biggest commercial decisions a CPG company makes. Trade spend is often one of the largest lines on the P&L, and the systems behind it shape how every planner, key account manager and field rep works for years. Getting it wrong is expensive and slow to undo.

The POI Panorama gives leaders an independent, practitioner-led view of the market before they commit. Instead of relying on vendor claims or starting every evaluation from scratch, commercial, finance and IT teams can see how platforms compare across the capabilities that matter to them, and build a sharper shortlist faster. Because POI repeats the evaluation every year, the report also shows which vendors are investing and improving over time, which is often as telling as where they stand today.

What are POI Best-in-Class Category Distinctions?

Within the Panorama, POI awards Best-in-Class Category Distinctions to vendors that stand out in specific functional areas, such as data management, mobile user experience or AI.

POI is careful to point out that a distinction is not an overall ranking, and that the best fit depends on each organisation’s needs. That balanced stance is one of the reasons buyers trust the report: it’s designed to inform decisions, not to crown a winner.

How should CPG companies use the POI Panorama?

Start with your own priorities. Identify the processes causing the most pain, whether that’s promotion ROI, claims, forecasting or store execution, then look at which vendors are recognised in those categories. Read the Panorama alongside POI’s State of the Industry research to benchmark your maturity against peers. The full report is available to POI members, and membership also opens the door to POI’s events and peer network. Learn more about POI membership.

Aforza in the POI Panorama: 2022 to 2026

Aforza has been evaluated in the POI Panorama every year since 2022. We’d like to thank Michael Kantor, Pam Brown, Sarah Meyer, Jack Harnedy and the whole POI team for the rigour and care they bring to the process each year, and for the time they invest in understanding every vendor’s platform. We’re proud of the recognition we’ve received along the way.

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