Northern Trail Outfitters (NTO) is utilizing Consumer Goods Cloud TPM to manage their promotional activities.

In Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud, the Account object is the core entity for the Trade Org Hierarchy. Best practice design principles dictate that both direct customers (Distributors/Wholesalers) and indirect customers (Retailers/Outlets) should be modeled as Accounts.

To represent the "Indirect" relationship—where a Manufacturer sells to a Distributor, who then sells to a Retailer—you should not overcomplicate the data model with custom junction objects unless absolutely necessary for many-to-many complexities that cannot be handled otherwise. For standard indirect management in TPM, the recommended approach is to use theStandard Accounts objectfor both parties and utilizecustom lookup fieldson the Retailer account to point to the Distributor.

This "Wholesaler" or "Distributor" lookup field allows the system to aggregate volume or plan promotions that target the Retailer while acknowledging the fulfillment path through the Distributor. This design keeps the architecture aligned with the Salesforce core data model and ensures compatibility with the TPM calculation engines (Processing Services), which are optimized to traverse standard Account hierarchies and attributes. Using a custom junction object (Option A) would likely require significant custom development to make the TPM engine "see" the relationship for volume roll-ups, whereas Account lookups are native and easily queryable2222.