Integrating ALL That Data!

Editor's Notes

• #3: Our customer implementations range in size from multi billion dollar companies, to small companies that utilize our solutions. You’ll notice that these are not just companies who sell through drug stores. We integrate any data and any POS data source. So whether your POS comes from grocery, drugstores, mass retailers, specialty stores or convenience stores, we can integrate it. We also integrate POS coming from third parties like Nielsen, IRI, Market 6, and any others. In addition to our CPG Customers, we also have companies in other industries who use our data integration and business intelligence tools. But our focus is on CPG.
• #4: This slide depicts the data dilemma that consumer goods companies face. The data is there. You get it. You might even have the impression you’re getting too much data. But that isn’t the case. The issue is having that data in a usable and reliable format. The data comes in from so many different sources that it’s impossible to get the full value out of it. Most companies are using it just to produce the reports they need. They just don’t have the time to create new insights even though the data is there. Each one of these source provide information and potentially reports. But analysts spend an average of 80-90% of their time gathering and pulling together data. Inevitably, there are discrepancies in the reports and analysts are then stuck spending more time trying to figure out where the numbers came from. Not only is this a very tedious task but when people’s numbers don’t match, there is a lack of confidence in the data and rightfully so. But it wastes not only the analysts time but it also leads to wasted time on managements part when they argue over who’s data is right and could potentially lead to costly and incorrect decisions. On top of that since 90% of an analysts time is spent gathering, cleaning, integrating and justifying their reports. This is time that keeps analysts away from actually getting to analyze the data and gain new insights. This is why our enterprise solution offers companies a very fast ROI.
• #5: This slide depicts the data dilemma that consumer goods companies face. The data is there. You get it. You might even have the impression you’re getting too much data. But that isn’t the case. The issue is having that data in a usable and reliable format. The data comes in from so many different sources that it’s impossible to get the full value out of it. Most companies are using it just to produce the reports they need. They just don’t have the time to create new insights even though the data is there. Each one of these source provide information and potentially reports. But analysts spend an average of 80-90% of their time gathering and pulling together data. Inevitably, there are discrepancies in the reports and analysts are then stuck spending more time trying to figure out where the numbers came from. Not only is this a very tedious task but when people’s numbers don’t match, there is a lack of confidence in the data and rightfully so. But it wastes not only the analysts time but it also leads to wasted time on managements part when they argue over who’s data is right and could potentially lead to costly and incorrect decisions. On top of that since 90% of an analysts time is spent gathering, cleaning, integrating and justifying their reports. This is time that keeps analysts away from actually getting to analyze the data and gain new insights. This is why our enterprise solution offers companies a very fast ROI.
• #15: POSmart streamlines the cleansing and integration of all these various data sources and puts them into a common repository where the data is clean and reliable. It’s also in a format that’s designed for easy reporting. Reports can be automated to send to users and power users also have an easy to access database where they can do ad-hoc querying. The result is far more productivity both from the analysts position as well as more productive management meetings. In addition, you have more access to reliable information than you’ve ever had. This data will help you know more about your business, provide more value to your management, understand your customer’s better and provide more insights to generate more profits.
• #16: Our “Smart Solution Architecture” includes our BlueSky Integration Studio, or BIS, as well as our underlying data model. BlueSky Integration Studio is really the core of the application. It acts as a hub as well as a cleansing and validation tool to integrate new data. BIS is a very robust and powerful data integration engine with a GUI interface that is also self documenting. This may not seem important to business users, but IT loves this component of our Smart Solution. BIS not only brings together data from all the various sources, but it also has pre-designed mappings for retailers and data providers. In addition, it has cleansing and validation routines as well as customizable business rules with the ability to create new rules based on your company’s requirements. The flexible data model is also a critical part of the solution. There is a staging area where we cross reference your data with the retailer data. We also align hierarchy’s and allow users to create their own hierarchy’s if they want. The next phase of the data model is where we store history and put the data into an easy to use format for the business users. The data model also incorporates retailer calendars as well as your own internal calendar. This allows you to report to your internal management based on your internal calendar, using your internal terminology. But it also gives category management, trade teams, supply chain and sales teams the ability to report back to retailers based on their terms. POSmart leverages the architecture and shows companies what they are selling, where they are selling, where they have Out of Stock’s, zero scan, phantom inventory and much more. The user interface is called BlueSky and not only presents reports to end users, but also gives power users the ability to create new reports, and even pull in data from other sources. Control Center is a customizable editing tool depending on if your company needs to edit data. TradeSmart leverages the data from the Smart Solution architecture to present reports back, that will show how your promotions are performing. Since most POS data is updated daily, TradeSmart users can see how promotions are performing, during the promotion and actually make changes while promotions are in-flight! It also leverages shipment data and Cost Of Goods Sold to provide an accurate ROI to both your internal company as well as the retailer. This is very important in joining business planning sessions or JBPS. Kristy will get into more detail on this during her presentation. PromoPro is an option that leverages TradeSmart. With PromoPro, users can fine tune trade events and align spend with actual consumption.
• #17: POSmart is an Enterprise Demand Signal Repository Solution. It’s important to note that we coined the phrase “Enterprise Demand Signal Repository.” And I emphasize “Enterprise” because there are a lot of solutions that claim to be a DSR. DSR stands for demand signal repository. The reason there are supposedly so many DSR solutions is because the people or originally coined the DSR terminology were supply chain analysts. They had NO experience with technology and had little, if any, knowledge of architectures. So the end result was that if you showed the a software application with reports that included POS data, then they termed you a DSR solution provider. This was very frustrating which is why we coined the term, “Enterprise DSR.” We are architecture people, and to us, it was clear what the differences were in the various tools and solutions. We could see the difference between tools that simply provided POS reports for buyers, versus our POSmart architecture, that was designed from the ground up, to leverage POS across the corporation. So POSmart leverages the Smart Solution and data model design. That’s what makes it enterprise. We can continue to add other applications like we did with TradeSmart and companies can also leverage that data to feed into other systems or applications that could benefit from using clean POS data. Applications including forecasting applications, Trade Promotion Management applications, Supply chain management tools and so on. Our Smart Solution hub and source or target any data source. POSmart automates the integration & cleansing of point of sale data. Think about it. POS comes in the form of EDI files, Nielsen files, Retail Solutions, IRI, text files, FTP’s. It can also come from retailer portals like RetaiLink, Partners On-Line and so forth. Those are all different data types. POSmart has the ability to transform all those data types into a single data type while maintaining data quality. It harmonizes all those various sources and even harmonizes it with your internal sources like shipments that might be in Microsoft or budgets that might be in Oracle or product groupings that you might have in Excel or Access. POSmart harmonizes all those data sources. From there, it also cleanses and validates data like duplicates or UPC issues. Along with that harmonization of different sources and cleansing of the data it also handles hierarchy’s and even lets users create their own hierarchy’s. It applies retailer calendars to support reporting back to the retailers based on their term and their calendars. We can align the data based on the retailers geographies and your internal ones. Our report matrix applies new measures to basic information. Some retailers provide more data than others. Walmart for example provides a vast amount of information where someone like Dollar General is not so much. We developed our report matrix to give those other retail teams insight similar to what the Walmart team would see. We’ll go over the report matrix in the demo on Wednesday. POSmart Leverages POS so you can see actual sales. But you can also align that data with shipments, budgets, forecasts, geographies, promotions and anything else you want to integrate into the Smart Solution or bring together in the reports. BlueSky pushes reports & alerts out to end users to show them sales, OOS’s, phantom inventory, zero scans, shipments vs consumption, etc. It also allows power users to create ad-hoc reports and pull together reports from multiple sources into a single report.
• #18: The POSmart architecture is open. The data base is independent and can reside on Teradata, Oracle, DB2 and most others. If you can imagine everything on the left side of the white line exists at all our customers. This is just a sample of data sources, but you get the concept. On a nightly basis our BlueSky Integration Studio looks for new data. Any new data is then brought into our staging area where we cross reference the retailer data with your internal data, apply business rules, we align internal data with external data and we load the data into the POSmart data model where end users can easily access and query the data. Reports that were scheduled to run are then cached on the server so when end users come in in the morning, all their reports are already there and waiting for them. In addition, analysts are able to create new reports.
• #20: BlueSky Integration Studio is the integration engine that maps the various data sources. It also integrates and harmonizes the data into a common data type and transforms that data into a single database. In addition, BIS applies business rules and also validates and cleanses the data. It is a technical tool and we won’t be showing it today, but it is the core hub of our Smart Solution Suite.
• #23: TradeSmart leverages the Smart Solution Architecture. It leverages the automation, integration and harmonization of various trade components required to accurately measure trade spend ROI It is a promotion automation and analytics solution that actually lets you start measuring promotion performance as the promotion is going on. It brings together promotion plans, shipments and consumption as it relates to trade promotions. The promotion plans may be in Excel or they may be coming from applications like SAP TPM or Demantra or even Siebel or Prescient. The ability to bring together plans with shipments and consumption is what gives TradeSmart the ability to accurately measure ROI for both the manufacturer as well as the retailer. It offers the ability to not only accurately, analyze the trade promotions but it also lets you compare planning expectations across all retail segments Users can understand whether promotions were properly executed along with retail compliance TradeSmart provides a common repository for all historical promotions, enabling multi-year analysis and comparison of trade spend initiatives In addition results from TradeSpend can be fed into other systems such as planning, supply chain, merchandising, and so on.
• #24: The TradeSmart Architectue leverages the Smart Solution Architecture. It brings in data from your trade planning along with shipments, consumption, master data, forecasts and cost of goods sold. In addition, it brings in your master data. It transforms all those sources into a common data type, aligns the data for internal reporting and retailer reporting and presents you with reports that show you how your promotions are performing. In addition, you’re able to create ad hoc queries and even compare promotions with historical programs.
• #25: While syndicated data suppliers provide valuable data and insights into consumer behavior, it is only one of several sources required in order to understand true trade promotion ROI. The problem with using only syndicated data is that, at best, it will yield trade promotion ROI at retail. Not at the manufacturer. In this example a retailer forward buys 700 units shipped at a cost to retailer of $2.00 for a total cost to retail of $1,400. The consumption quantity during the promotion period is 500 units. The list price to consumer is $4.50 but the promoted price is $3.75. Thus, total consumption dollars on promotion is $1,875 (promo dollars) which is 500 units x $3.75. Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) is $1,000 and trade spend is $500. If we just use syndicated data, the ROI at retail is 87.50% ($1,875 promo dollars - $1,000 consumption cost/ $1,000 consumption cost). But this is inaccurate. The true ROI at retail is only 33.93%. That’s $1,875 in promo dollars minus the $1,400 retail cost, divided by the $1,400 retail cost. In addition, internal ROI for the consumer goods manufacturer can’t be calculated at all using only syndicated data, because both shipments and cost-of-goods-sold are required. When you factor those in, the internal ROI of the promotion is -6.67%! We’ll get into more detail on that calculation on next Wednesday’s demo. But as you can see, using only syndicated data yields very inaccurate results and internal ROI cannot be measured at all. To truly have effective joint business planning sessions (JBPS) with retailers, shipments, COSGS and trade spend dollars are required to accurately calculate ROI for both the retailer and manufacturer. ---------------------------------------------------- This is calculated: (Retail Cost-(COGS+Trade Spend))/(COGS+Trade Spend) or ($1,400-($1,000+$500))/($1,000+$500). In addition, Relational Solutions recommends aligning tactics to the actual consumer event at retail to gain even greater accuracy
• #26: This report shows an example of the type of information you would want to present at a joint business planning session with your retailers. The second column shows promtions that were positive for the manufacturer. The 4th column show performance of the promotions for the retailer. The first column shows KPI’s with up arrows that show the promotions that were both successful for the retailer as well as the manufacturer. These are obviously promotions worth repeating.
• #33: Our TradeSmart application also offers an optional component called PromoPro. PromoPro offers event details like event start and end dates, products at the brand, sub-brand or item level, store banners and tactics. It basically lets you do things like group promoted product groups into events to create a single event at the retailer. It lets you realign promoted product group dates and event with sales. Users can override base and incremental values by event when they need to. They can also allocate spend to units in order to not double count units sold.
• #34: This shows you a screen shot of PromoPro, but we’ll get into more detail on PromoPro in next Wednesday’s demo.
• #35: We would like to thank you all for joining us today. We invite you to follow our Relational Solutions training blog by going to our website at relationalsolutions.com. We also suggest you join the Demand Signal Repository Institute on LinkedIn. You can also see more training video’s on our Relational Solutions, YouTube channel. We ask that you follow Relational Solutions and Janet on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook and connect with us on LinkedIN. You are also free to contact us via phone and email. Thanks again for joining us and we look forward to your participation next Wednesday!
• #36: We would like to thank you all for joining us today. We invite you to follow our Relational Solutions training blog by going to our website at relationalsolutions.com. We also suggest you join the Demand Signal Repository Institute on LinkedIn. You can also see more training video’s on our Relational Solutions, YouTube channel. We ask that you follow Relational Solutions and Janet on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook and connect with us on LinkedIN. You are also free to contact us via phone and email. Thanks again for joining us and we look forward to your participation next Wednesday!