Collaborative Analytics

Is Engagement about deals or more?

2009-11-22T19:23:55Z

Much has been said about of the ability of social media as enablers for brands to connect with consumers in a “two way dialogue”. But to entice the consumers into this engagement is largely through traditional marketing tactics like discounts and promotions. What's really going on is that companies and brands are amassing followers by offering coupons, freebies and access to exclusive deals. So it’s not so much about passion for a brand or brand’s values but about deals.

But is that something to worry about?

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Brands are using discounts or freebies to increase the affinity for brands and the likelihood to purchase, build and safeguard brand reputation, get new product ideas, gather feedback, demographics and other information from consumers. It helps them drive traffic to brand sites, where visitors are engaged via new marketing techniques. These brands are taking their chances to connect with the consumers and equipping themselves with key consumer insights for brand war of future.

Eventually the motive is to shift focus from brand awareness and impressions to driving people to make purchases and spread the word about products and services they use. Studies suggest that consumers do get influenced by digital interactions with a brand and there is a relationship seen between digital interaction and sales.

Is it worth the investment? Maybe, if not, at least consumers will choose to converse with a savvier and trendy partner or one simply offering them a better deal.

Sneak preview of iCATalytics integration capabilities with SAP Solutions – Part 3

2009-10-09T09:14:37Z

In continuation with my previous post, which focused on a process level integration, I'll cover the UI level integration capablities of iCATalytics in this blog post.

]]> The iCATalytics product is completely compatible with the SAP NetWeaver Portal. The following details the main points:

Portal Content in the form of Enterprise Portal Business Package is available out-of-the-box
Portal Content consists of pre-defined roles, worksets, pages and iViews
All iViews are compatible with the branding requirements and hence will adopt the themes as selected by the Portal user
Support for Single Sign On

Thus, as far as a user is concerned, all iCATalytics applications including the composite application as well as enterprise applications have a single point of access.

Incidentally, iCATalytics is certified by the Integration and Certification Center at SAP.

This concludes the preview series. I look forward to comments and feedback.

Sneak preview of iCATalytics integration capabilities with SAP Solutions – Part 2

2009-09-29T05:17:36Z

In continuation with my previous blog, which focused on a data level integration, I'll delve deeper into the process level integration capabilities of iCATalytics in this blog.

]]> The Planning Templates is a key component of the iCATalytics TPO solution that helps to attain optimized planning maturity based on a ‘Pay for Performance’ model by allowing to plan across the DSMP activities in a unified manner. This enables the user to define goals for their retailer customers based on the latter’s past performance. The DSMP activities can be planned to help the retailer customers achieve the defined goals. Thus, the user creates the plan that encompasses the base business volumes as well incremental volumes generated by trade promotions. It is possible to have multiple plan scenarios for a specific combination value of planning dimensions (such as customer, product, time etc). Predictive models are used to arrive at metrics such as expected incremental volumes. The different plan scenarios are compared and the most optimum one is selected for execution.

Let us consider a Consumer Goods company that runs SAP CRM along with SAP Trade Promotion Management (SAP TPM). This solution has got a specific CRM Marketing Element called “Trade Promotion” to plan & track an event or trade promotion, that the CG company runs, along with information such as products planned, trade spends used and expected incremental volumes. In addition, an “Account Plan” object helps to plan for revenue, costs and contribution margins. This usually captures the non-promoted volumes, regular sales and discounts etc. The “Account Plan” has automatic links to related “Trade Promotions” and a consolidated view is available.

Having seen how the Planning Templates can be used to arrive at an optimized plan, it would result in true business benefit to have it integrated to SAP TPM. This is precisely what the Composite Application for Trade Promotions achieves. This composite is based on SAP NetWeaver platform and allows a user to browse, review and compare various plan scenarios from the Planning Templates. Moreover, there is an approval process to get a specific scenario approved. On approval, the base business plan and the event plans from the plan scenario are posted to SAP CRM system as “Account Plan” and “Trade Promotions”. This provides a seamless integration between the TPO system and the TPM system.

The whitepaper “Complement TPM systems with integrated TPO” discusses the benefits that an effective TPO system can bring to a TPM system.

Sneak preview of iCATalytics integration capabilities with SAP Solutions – Part 1

2009-09-23T11:28:33Z

Having suggested the potential value addition of having out-of-the-box integration between TPO and SAP solutions in my last blog, I thought it might be a good idea to share a sneak preview into some specific integration capabilities of iCATalytics. I plan to do this over the next few weeks with this being the first in the series.

]]> The Demand Data Model (DDM) is an important component of the integrated data foundation on which the core functions of the iCATalytics TPO solution is based. Data from various sources such as enterprise (internal), syndicated sources (AC Nielson, IRI, etc), POS and loyality card systems are consolidated into the DDM. Needless to say, it would be very advantageous to have accelerators that would speed up this consolidation during the implementation of the TPO Solution.

Assuming an organization runs on SAP solutions, then the enterprise / internal data would definitely be sourced from the SAP landscape. From a standardization point of view, we further assume that the organization already has an EDW that is based on SAP BI/BW solution. As we know, SAP BI/BW comes with a huge repository of pre-modeled standard Business Content (SAP BI Content) for various business processes.

iCATalytics TPO solution will come with the following:

A connector that is based on the Open Hub Services (OHS) provided by SAP BI/BW. This would be advantageous in case the customer is using an ETL tool that does not support OHS based extraction.
Pre-identified SAP BI Content (InfoObjects, InfoCubes, etc) that are potential sources to the DDM.
ETL logic that is based on a staging compatible with the identified SAP BI Content models.
To conclude, iCATalytics TPO will come with pre-built accelerators to speed up the integration of SAP BI based source data with the DDM.

New Addition In Digital Marketing Mix

2009-09-19T17:49:42Z

Unilever was recently in news for sacking Lowe, London, as the ad agency for its Peperami snack brand in favor of an inclusive strategy where the key lies in involving the consumers in the process of generating ad ideas. Although not a startlingly bold or original concept, it is interesting to see large CPG companies experiment with such emerging technologies and the new digital marketing mix.

The term ‘crowdsourcing’ coined by Jeff Howe’s June 2006 Wired Article “The Rise of Crowdsourcing” is now extended and being used by savvy marketers to describe the concept of ‘crowdsourcing’ as a means to connect their brands with customers right from its innovation stage. Crowdsourcing provides clients with a relatively inexpensive, yet abundant check on ideas and helps garner insights from community thinking that may have been missed.

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Until recently it was widely believed that crowsourced route would be taken up mainly by cash-strapped startup, small business or companies that need something functional, yet good. Larger companies that spend millions on their R&D, branding and marketing activities will continue to do so...through in-house or partner companies/ agencies. But the success of crowdsourced programs like Starbucks' MyStarbucksIdea and Dell's IdeaStorm are encouraging more and even bigger companies to use technology to make creativity a social activity that knows no geographic bounds.

It is in many ways similar to P&G’s innovative ‘Connect & Develop’ model, which would have been inconceivable ten years ago. A.G. Lafley goal for P&G to acquire 50% of their innovations from outside P&G challenged the company’s to reinvent its innovation business model and create “Connect and Develop” innovation model. With a clear sense of consumers' needs, P&G identifies promising ideas from throughout the world and applies its own R&D, manufacturing, marketing, and purchasing capabilities to them to create better and cheaper products, faster. As was the belief, ‘crowdsourcing’ is not a passing fad - it is taking different forms, growing and creating a niche market space where new players are emerging, taking upon themselves the task of facilitating ‘crowdsourcing’ for companies. These companies are important because identifying the idea is just one part of the creative/ innovative product, finding a way to translate the diversity and brilliance of the crowd into the execution of the product is the key to the success of ‘crowdsourcing’.

I believe that ‘crowdsourcing’ is here to stay; it will grow and challenge the way companies have been approaching 'innovation' and ‘creativity’ traditionally.

Collaboration-The New Business Strategy

2009-09-19T16:53:24Z

The goal of demand-driven programs to “sense the shelf as well as align supply chains in order to serve the shopper at the shelf with minimal latency” is becoming a reality with increasing number of retailers willing to share their data with CPG companies.

Historically retailers have been wary of sharing data and doubtful of the tangible benefits they could derive of such a partnership. CPG companies who have addressed the concerns of retailers have got compelling benefits and managed to change the common view that data sharing is a technology strategy.

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CPG companies are increasingly playing a more crucial role and not shying away from discussing important and sensitive issues such as- handing data cleanliness, accuracy and security in the hands of CPG companies; tangible returns of such a partnership either in form of payment for shared data or immediate, tangible and actionable insights tailored for the retailers; borrowing the expertise or support from CPG companies or third parties to implement the recommended business process change within the store and most importantly selecting the most profitable and trusted partner.

Collaboration that began as an exercise to improve out-of stock by participating trading partners is morphing into others areas as well and now viewed as a business strategy. Downstream data is now increasingly used for reducing cost, trade promotion planning and analysis, better forecasting and replenishment, reducing inventory, effective new product development and introduction and enhancing shopping experience.

TPO applications need to respect the 800 pound gorilla in CPG Industry’s IT landscape

2009-07-20T08:31:32Z

The dominance of SAP as the primary ERP system in CPG companies’ IT landscape, is a well established fact. Any look at the leading players shows that more than 90% of the CPG companies use SAP as the primary transaction processing system. What does this mean for any TPM/TPO system?

]]> The simple answer to this question is that SAP is like the 800 pound gorilla in the CPG organizations’ IT landscape, and any animal wanting to live in harmony and play its role in local eco system, needs to respect it. Thus, for any TPM/TPO system to be effective in CPG organization, it should be able to integrate flawlessly with SAP and also align to a good extent with the data/process definitions as dictated by SAP. The integration should be full cycle and not just one-way data transfer kind of integration. The integration needs to start from having synchronized master data so that the TPO system plans the promotions for a supply/demand chain set-up, which exists in the SAP system. Plus it needs to use the historical promotion/sales data which is real and correct. Once the planning is done, the output of the TPO needs to be transferred to SAP for it to reflect in the relevant sales process (Pricing, Material Determination…) with the correct effective date and for the correct duration. To close the cycle, the integration should also cover the mid and post promotion analysis for which it needs to have real time integration with the SAP system and/or the data warehouse (most likely SAP-BW).

Thus for any TPO solution to be effective and successful in a CPG industry, one of the biggest consideration should be its ‘out-of-box’ ‘certified by SAP’ integration with SAP. The out-of-box integration should not be a teaser, but a real integration covering all the facets described above. Should enable automated creation of promotions in CRM system and should lead to creation of pricing records etc in the ECC system. Certification is important for any customer to be comfortable about the ability of the TPO solution to work in an SAP centric landscape. If both these aspects are covered, it will provide a winning value proposition, of-course in addition to sound TPM/TPO capabilities to begin with.

Power of the collective wisdom

2009-06-26T14:18:52Z

Collaborative Analytics has taken out the silos from the business analysis process and data from disparate sources like customer, transactional, operational are analyzed to come up with a single, unified version of the truth. The new mantra of involving the stake holders, both internal and external to an organization, in a collaborative manner for product ideation and definition is leading to faster and more acceptable product deployment in the market and therefore more profitable business results. The fresher perspectives that multiple frames of references brings about combined with the tacit knowledge has led to deeper insights and more robust analytic skills.]]> Sharing forms the cornerstone of Collaborative Analytics and Wikis, Google Docs are all based on this idea. Technologies and tools are as intelligent as the people who are using it to collaborate. A culture of sharing and collaborating must be there for any collaborative analytics initiatives to succeed.

The business analytics that results out of such collaborations should be able to ensure better performance, and should be scalable and flexible enough to meet the needs of all users. Working towards a common goal, sharing the risks and rewards and providing the intended results at the minimum utilization of resources are what constitute a true Collaborative enterprise. The boundaries of how various teams synergize together has added new dimensions to traditional Marketing. The marketers 360 degree view of the consumer today is enhanced by this social convergence of analytics which includes internal data along with blogs, reviews, sentiments, opinions etc.. Collaborative Analytics, to put it briefly, is the socialism-centric way of doing things which focuses more on the power of the collective wisdom than the intelligence of the chosen few.

New Age Marketing – The Digital Paradigm

2009-06-26T14:14:30Z

Interestingly its impact on spend on other marketing mix components is varied. Spend on trade promotion continue upward spiral in spite of increasing cost and complexity while network-TV spending has declined. With the advent of better data and ability to view measurable impact will ultimately will be what it takes to get consumer package-goods brands to spend more on digital. It would be interesting to see how digital revolution will change the marketing game especially the trade promotion area and how CPG companies and retailers will utilize the digital channel to extend the reach and effectiveness of trade promotions.

SAP Solutions with Integrated TPO

2009-06-26T14:06:45Z

Trade promotions are an important business practice adopted by Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) companies to increase market share, shelf space, revenues and margins. The SAP Trade Promotion Management (SAP TPM) is a well rounded solution that address all the major processes spanning sales & promotion planning, field planning, customer sell-in & negotiation, retail execution & validation and both pre-event & post-event analysis.]]>
One evident business problem that comes up in the usage of a TPO solution with SAP TPM is the lack of out-of-the-box integration. The business user would need to manually feed in the various promotions that are the optimized outcome of the TPO solution. Moreover, the price optimization results, as part of the turn business planning, would also need to be manually applied to the backend ERP system.

Wouldn’t it be great if TPO solutions had readymade integration capabilities that could actually turn the optimized results in TPO solutions into actions in the SAP TPM and SAP ERP systems? This would mean that the optimized prices & promotions adopted (after comparing the results of various what-if scenarios using predictive analytics) in the TPO system are automatically transferred and converted to execution level objects in the SAP ERP and SAP TPM systems. I believe that TPO and TPM systems could then be said to be truly integrated at the process level.

Trade Promotions 2.0

2009-06-26T14:02:46Z

The CGT summer conference reverberated with two main themes- How to leverage the digital revolution for better sales/ marketing and around the evergreen topic of trade spend. As the companies are still struggling to better manage and optimize the trade spend- the second biggest line item in the balance sheet, discussions and presentations centered around various ways in which trade spend should be treated as an investment, instead of expense.
With trade spend spiraling upwards in spite of economic downturn and declining IT budgets, the focus is on optimization solutions that complement existing applications and are deployed with lower upfront cost.

While trade promotion optimization is problem area that CPG companies have been attempting to get their hands around for more than a decade , completeness of the above vision is what will define the success in the era of Trade Promotions 2.0.]]>