Connected Insights

Empowering the consumer goods organization with actionable data and flexible control

Microsoft solutions for Connected Insights combine an easy, yet powerful, end-user experience with the control and flexibility needed by line of business practitioners. The solutions reach beyond the traditional scope of business intelligence (BI), providing access to critical information at all levels of the organization. Microsoft solutions offer the unique advantage of connecting the enterprise with internal and external organizations and customers. In this way, Microsoft solutions for Connected Insights can become an integral part of a larger infrastructure that includes enterprise performance management; supply chain planning, visibility, and execution; customer relationship management; and customer loyalty programs.

"Microsoft technologies work together to collect and deliver the sales information we need to take advantage of opportunities, perform sales analysis, increase customer insight, and keep our sales team connected."
Joe Menetre, Sales Director, New Belgium Brewing

Microsoft solutions integrate business intelligence capabilities with your business applications already in use. The solutions deliver a full range of personal, team, and organizational business insight tools across key functional areas in the consumer goods sector-from enabling account managers with sales scorecards based on downstream retailer data, to enabling trade promotion managers with real-time visibility of return on investment by promotional event, to arming supply chain practitioners with real-time demand forecasts.

Increase sales and marketing effectiveness

Business Challenge

Success often hinges on understanding shopper and consumer behavior. How well data is shared between points in the cycle-point-of-sale scan consumption, pre- and post-promotional analyses, shopper touch points, pricing, and availability-impacts brand success.

Solutions

  • Trade and consumer promotion optimization removes the guesswork about business performance by providing up-to-date sales, promotion, and deal performance information while updating projections on a daily basis.

  • Merchandise assortment and planning enable collaboration around the vast amounts of dynamic demand and supply information, product/location attributes, historical performance, current trends, and strategic and financial objectives, helping you to best plan and execute store-level merchandise supply.

  • Retail execution solutions feature rich mobile applications that use smart technology to integrate seamlessly with intelligent in-office management components, automating day-to-day operations, optimizing in-store effectiveness, and accelerating information velocity to and from the field.

  • Demand signal repository solutions enable consumer goods companies to harness the power of near real-time, point-of-sale scan data to drive effectiveness in sales, marketing, supply chain, operations, and new product development.

  • Customer loyalty and shopper analytics use a deep set of data mining algorithms to enable deeper insights around customer, shopper and market loyalty, and segmentation. By leveraging predictive analytics, consumer goods companies can ensure product availability to complement the in-store shopper experience.

Connect the innovation process

Business Challenge

Connecting the innovation process calls for understanding how trends and market factors impact the course of innovation. BI solutions offer innovation processes, advanced stage-gating, algorithms, collaboration, ideation, and knowledge management.

Solutions

  • Collaboration and knowledge management employ dynamic cross-team communications, such as instant messages, Web conferences, and video chats, to enable collaboration. With Microsoft solutions, innovation teams collaborate on idea concepts, find information quickly, manage related content, and communicate with external partners and customers.

  • Increasing the speed of the innovation process compresses the innovation cycle and lets your people make decisions faster using automated process guidance combined with content and innovation process management.

  • Enhanced visibility into the innovation process uses portfolio management to view the full innovation pipeline and balance ideas against resources and risks; it also enables constant visibility into key business information and performance results through tracking and reporting activities.

Optimize supply and demand cycles

Business Challenge

Operational information often is scattered across multiple sources, which can make it difficult to quickly access the information needed to capitalize on opportunities-including success rates from promotions, inventory, and product availability.

Solutions

  • Supply chain planning, visibility, and optimization provide connected insights across the entire supply chain, including the optimal placement of inventory within the supply chain and reduced operating costs through improved manufacturing, transportation, and distribution.

Reduce operational costs and complexity

Business Challenge

Building and maintaining BI solutions can create significant costs and complexity, which can be overcome with a flexible infrastructure that successfully aggregates disparate data.

Solutions

  • Enterprise performance management delivers a full range of tightly integrated personal, team, and organizational tools and products that support organizational insight to help consumer goods companies make good decisions that drive business productivity and performance.

  • Financial management gives individuals a way to raise the visibility of financial metrics and the effectiveness of financial management throughout the organization while using familiar tools and existing skills.

Learn more

brochure cover Download our brochure, Microsoft solutions for Connected Insights, to learn more about how Microsoft solutions give consumer goods companies the actionable business insights need to be agile and successful in today’s markets.