At a glance
The engagement
About the client
Godfrey Phillips India
Godfrey Phillips India plans and executes field activity merchandising drives, brand campaigns, promotional pushes across many branches, regions and towns through a shared field structure. Every quarter, each brand and branch commits to what it will execute across regions, zones and towns, and those commitments have to pass through brand, category, central planning and branch stakeholders before they become live plans. Once the number of brands, branches and approval layers grows past a certain point, spreadsheet- and email-based planning stops scaling not as a failure of any one team, but as what happens by default when cycle planning runs on manual, document-based coordination at scale.
The business challenge
Cycle planning without a system of record is a governance gap.
Before GPIL-CyclePlan, quarterly activity plans were coordinated through spreadsheets and email approvals, with no single system tracking what was planned, what was approved, and what was actually executed in the field. Plans lived in spreadsheets emailed between Brand Team, Brand Head, Category Head, CPC and Branch Team, with no shared record of the current approved version. A plan had to pass through five distinct approval stages with no visibility into where it was stuck or who was holding it up.
There was no systematic way to compare what a branch actually executed, month by month, against what the plan committed to. And when an activity needed to be corrected or removed after a plan went live, there was no structured way to do that without losing the original record. The underlying challenge was the absence of a shared, governed system of record for cycle planning a gap that opens up naturally in any growing, multi-brand field organisation.
What Triazine Software built
A governance and execution-adherence platform not a generic list app.
Triazine Software built GPIL-CyclePlan as native SharePoint Framework web parts a five-stage approval chain, hierarchy-scoped planning, month-by-month adherence tracking, auditable corrections and a scheduled notification layer.
A five-stage approval chain that survives organisational change
Every marketing plan follows a structured approval workflow, with each approval transition recorded as an independent audit entry. The system captures the approver, role, submission date, and remarks at every step, enabling complete end-to-end visibility into the plan's approval journey. Approval routing is driven by configurable role and branch mappings rather than fixed user assignments, so reassigning a role immediately redirects any pending approvals without requiring a code change. For exceptional cases where a plan genuinely becomes stuck, Site Admins have a governed force-update mechanism to restore the workflow while maintaining administrative control.
- Five-stage approval workflow with complete audit trail - approver, role, date, and remarks captured at every transition.
- Dynamic role-based routing enables instant reassignment of pending approvals without code changes.
- Governed admin force-update path to resolve genuine workflow exceptions.
Planning scoped to the real distribution footprint
Region, Town, AM Zone, ASM Zone, State and Branch are mapped against Brand, Category and SKU through dedicated mapping lists, so every activity is planned against the organisation's real distribution footprint rather than a flat list and a user only ever sees the plans and actions their role, brand and branch entitle them to. Activities are scheduled to specific months and weeks, and execution status is captured independently for each month of the quarter, so a plan is not just approved its actual field execution is measured month by month against what was originally planned.
- Real hierarchy Region · Town · AM/ASM Zone · State · Branch × Brand · Category · SKU
- Entitlement-scoped views no brand's plan data leaks into another's view
- Month-by-month adherence execution captured per month with remarks, against the original plan
Execution-phase corrections with the original record intact
Activities modified or removed after a plan is live are flagged rather than hard-deleted, kept in a recoverable, auditable history. The Activity Restore tool shows a branch or area team exactly what changed during execution and lets them restore or adjust an activity without losing the original record and restore and delete actions each trigger their own notification, keeping every change visible to the relevant approvers rather than happening silently.
- Nothing hard-deleted live-phase changes flagged into a recoverable history
- Restore with audit what changed, restored or adjusted, with the original preserved
- Changes announced restore and delete actions notify the relevant approvers automatically
Reminders that fire themselves, and reports leadership actually uses
A dedicated scheduled-notification service runs five timer jobs one per approval role firing submission, approval, publish, execution and closure reminders automatically on configurable per-phase day windows, so plans keep moving without anyone manually chasing the next approver. On the analytics side, four report views AM Utilization, Activity Adherence, Adherence Analysis and AM Activities aggregate live plan and execution data with multi-level geographic grouping and one-click Excel export, used by Area Managers, Category Heads and Head Office for stakeholder review.
- Five timer jobs one per role, on configurable per-phase schedules, built test-driven to a 90%+ coverage target
- Four-report suite AM Utilization · Activity Adherence · Adherence Analysis · AM Activities
- Excel export offline-ready reporting for stakeholder reviews
Business outcomes
One governed system of record, from plan intent to field execution.
Verified programme outcomes from GPIL-CyclePlan in live use.
◈For governance
GPIL-CyclePlan gives Godfrey Phillips India a single governed system of record for cycle planning, replacing disconnected spreadsheets and email-based approvals across Brand Team, Brand Head, Category Head, CPC and Branch Team. Every plan's position in its five-stage approval chain is visible at all times, every transition is recorded with approver, role, date and remarks, and execution-phase changes follow an auditable correction path instead of silent, untracked edits.
◎For the field and leadership
Month-by-month execution-adherence tracking planned versus executed now feeds directly into the Activity Adherence and AM Utilization reports used by Area Managers, Category Heads and Head Office. One platform serves every brand, category and branch combination, running natively on the organisation's existing SharePoint Online tenant with no separate infrastructure to run or secure, and designed to scale cleanly as more brands, branches and cycles are added.
Technology landscape
Native on SharePoint Online no separate server, database or hosting.
GPIL-CyclePlan was built as SharePoint Framework web parts on GPI's existing Microsoft 365 tenant, with Azure WebJobs for scheduled notifications and Highcharts for the analytics suite.
Enterprise security & compliance
Governance built in security inherited from the tenant, enforced by the platform.
Enterprise planning platforms carry commercially sensitive data what every brand intends to execute, where, and how well it performed. GPIL-CyclePlan protects that data by design: it runs entirely inside Godfrey Phillips India's existing SharePoint Online tenant, inheriting the organisation's Microsoft 365 security, identity, backup and data-residency posture, with no data leaving the tenant to a separate application server or database.
On top of that inherited foundation, the platform enforces its own governance layer: role-, brand- and branch-scoped access, a complete per-transition audit record on every plan, an auditable correction path for execution-phase changes, and a test-driven notification service with Triazine Software's delivery processes governed by CMMI Level 3 certification.
Tenant-Native Security
Runs entirely on GPI's SharePoint Online tenant inherits Microsoft 365 authentication, security, backup and hosting; no separate infrastructure to secure.
Role-Based Access Control
Role, brand and branch entitlements enforced through mapping lists a user only ever sees the plans and actions their role, brand and branch entitle them to.
Audit Trails
Every plan transition recorded with approver, role, submission date and remarks any plan's full approval history reconstructable end to end.
Change Governance
Execution-phase modifications flagged, recoverable and notified no silent edits to approved plans.
Data Residency
SharePoint Online lists are the sole system of record plan data never leaves the organisation's Microsoft 365 environment.
Quality & Delivery Governance
Notification service built test-driven to a 90%+ coverage target; delivery processes certified to CMMI Level 3.
Compliance-ready foundation
Rather than adding another external system to secure, Triazine built GPIL-CyclePlan inside the security perimeter GPI already operates.
M365Inherited tenant security
Identity, backup, hosting and data residency inherited from GPI's Microsoft 365 SharePoint Online tenant.
RBACEntitlement-scoped visibility
Role, brand and branch mapping lists enforce who can see and act on every plan.
AuditPer-transition history
Approver, role, date and remarks on every stage reconstructable end to end.
CMMI L3Enterprise delivery practices
Enterprise delivery practices aligned with CMMI Level 3 across development, testing and governance.
Beyond go-live
From replacing spreadsheets to planning-to-execution governance.
What began as a way to replace spreadsheet- and email-driven cycle planning with a single governed workflow has grown into a full planning-to-execution governance platform a five-stage approval chain that survives organisational change, scheduling tied to the real geographic and brand hierarchy, month-by-month adherence tracking, an auditable restore path and a scheduled notification layer. GPIL-CyclePlan is live at solution version 1.1.1.3 and designed to scale cleanly as more brands, branches and cycles are added to it.
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Let's bring governance to your next planning cycle.
From quarterly cycle planning and five-stage approvals to modern trade ordering and secondary sales, Triazine builds the governed systems of record multi-brand FMCG organisations run their field execution on approved on the record, tracked against reality and auditable end to end.