Systems/Enterprise:
IRI CONTENT-ON-DEMAND FACTORY TRANSFORMS CPG, RETAIL INDUSTRIES
Continuing its business transformation and increasing the value and relevance
of marketplace information, Information Resources Inc unveiled plans for the
CPG and retail industry's first Content-on-Demand Factory. As a global
provider of content, analytic services and Business Performance Management
(BPM) solutions to the consumer packaged goods (CPG), retail and health care
industries, IRI is pushing forward aggressively to provide the information,
analytics and technology that today's manufacturers and retailers need to
compete and grow profits in a challenging consumer environment.
The CPG and retail industry faces challenges of lackluster growth and
increasing competition for the consumer's spend. To stay competitive in this
slow-growth market, manufacturers and retailers must be able to have a
comprehensive, real-time view of their markets. They must be able to:
- Quickly identify and exploit consumer behavior trends.
- Recognize early buying trends by individual consumer groups.
- Anticipate demand by geography or demographic sub-segment.
- Quickly synthesize multiple views of the market to provide a better
view of customers.
- Collaborate to appeal effectively to the consumer and maximize in-store
execution.
- Shape targeted promotions to selected buyers.
- Respond quickly to pending out-of-stock situations.
- Quickly monitor promotion results.
- Provide suppliers advance notice of inventory needs.
- Recognize opportunities to move products with price promotion.
The new capabilities derived from IRI's Content-on-Demand Factory will
significantly improve the speed, flexibility and data quality currently
provided, giving manufacturers and retailers a real-time, comprehensive view
of their market. Using state-of-the art data management technology to process
the volumes of data coming from daily retail, shipment, inventory and consumer
data updates, IRI plans to provide companies with the ability to make
real-time decisions and give them a competitive edge.
Companies will receive a much more accurate view of sales trends. They will
gain real-time feedback of promotion success, in-stock conditions and sales
yields. They will have visualization tools and analytics modeling to quickly
sift through data to spot key trends and root cause issues. For the first
time, they'll have an easy way to create a composite view of their market that
turns market data into actionable business insight.
"Our clients have told us that they've seen the value of traditional market
data erode as the pace of business increases," said Romesh Wadhwani, IRI's
chairman. "IRI is out to transform the way manufacturers and retailers think
about their businesses -- and having real-time data and insight into
root-cause issues is fundamental to that transformational thinking. Our
Content-on-Demand Factory is the way the industry is going to get there."
"Delivery of daily data and the supporting applications dramatically increases
the value IRI is able to deliver to its customers," said Scott W. Klein, IRI
president and CEO. "Our investment in these next-generation data processing
capabilities will deliver great competitive advantage to our clients by
providing them with true real-time insights and analytics to more effectively
drive their business. This is an important element towards our commitment to
help our industry reinvent itself."
Developed in partnership with Acxiom Corp, the Content-on-Demand Factory is
based on a powerful state-of-the-art Grid computing architecture enabling IRI
to deliver daily data from select named retailers and InfoScan data
approximately three times faster than today. The new capabilities will enable
retailers and manufacturers to more effectively segment, visualize and analyze
market data and gain deeper, more relevant insights leading to actions more
flexibly, on-demand, and in real time.
IRI's Content-on-Demand Factory is currently under development. Initial
customer pilots are scheduled for early 2005.
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