The business practices of the massive retailer Wal-Mart are both praised and hated by different members of the CPG community. The main tenet of those practices has been lowering Wal-Mart’s costs, thereby allowing them to pass the savings onto the consumer, offering the lowest price in the market for a given product. One of Wal-Mart’s classic avenues for cutting costs on their own end is to reach back into their supply chain to identify what operations can be taken on by the company rather than outsourced. The retailer did this most prominently with the distribution of their demand data. When Wal-Mart pulled out of common practice of providing their data to large scale content providers such as IRI, they began to provide that data, via Retail Link, straight to the producers who stocked their shelves. In doing so Wal-Mart cut out the middleman, in this case the data content providers, both saving on costs and taking complete control of how and to whom their data was distributed.
A recent article posted online from Bloomberg Businessweek shows Wal-Mart employing similar tactics in regard to the transportation of their suppliers’ products. Read more…
The sheer amount of compounding demand information being created on a daily, weekly and yearly basis is causing a shift in the way CPG companies need to approach data capture and governance. Entirely new tools are becoming not only helpful, but necessary. This phenomenon could not be displayed more clearly than it was in a recent article posted on the home page of MarketWatch discussing the sharp rise in use of the Demand Signal Repository, or DSR. Read more…
The article “Are You Prepared to Store All This Data?” recently published by SourceMedia offers some staging numbers on the growth of digital information. As previously mentioned on this blog and myriad websites, the world’s mass of digital data is constantly expanding – and constantly quickening its pace of expansion. SourceMedia writes that the amount of information created in 2010 will equal about 1.2 zettabytes. Here are a few statistics to show what 1.2 zettabytes would equal in layman’s terms: Read more…
IT departments are facing significant challenges when implementing Demand Signal Repository (DSR) solutions that are currently available. First generation solutions do not integrate easily with existing supply chain and business intelligence software, making them expensive and time consuming to deploy. Despite these challenges, a DSR can be extremely beneficial to consumer goods companies for analyzing demand signals from a variety of data sources including point of sale (POS) data, syndicated retail data, and internal supply chain information. Read more…
It’s frustrating for category managers to know that detailed product sales information is needed in their analysis, yet they lack the tools and technology to quickly turn this data into actionable insights. Leveraging DSR (data signal repository) technology to accurately manage the increasing amount of data is essential to stay competitive in today’s consumer goods market. Learn how the new alqemyiQ enterprise solution, with an expanded DSR, improves the analytical process that is needed to drive growth and profitability. Read more…
Information Management posted an article on its website recently in which a data management consulting expert delineated what she thought necessary, at the onset, to implement a data management system within a company. Written by a partner at a respectable consulting firm (Jane Griffin for Deloitte Consulting LLP), the article is titled “Implementing a Data Governance Initiative,” and in the interest of having a diverse array of input on such implementation, here are the components she sees as necessary for efficient data management: Read more…
In conjunction with our previous blog post, another very interesting article within The Economist’s special report on the current deluge of data discussed the role of machines in handling the massive amount of data generated every day. The human brain, complex as it is, can only process a limited number of pieces of information simultaneously. Theories quoted in the article place the number of pieces at around seven, and it claims that when it comes to simultaneous concepts or relationships that number drops to four. The molecular biologist dispensing these numbers, Carl Pabo, says that, “there is an immense risk of cognitive overload,” with the rising torrent of information. Read more…
The cover of a recent issue (Feb. 27th – Mar. 5th) of The Economist depicts a man standing with a large umbrella above his head and vast amounts of binary code falling from the sky. Above him, ominous letters spell out, “The Data Deluge.” The largest section of the issue is dedicated to a few articles on the increasing mass of data in the world today and how it is being dealt with – and how it is being mishandled. Read more…
An article in USA Today reports that as of March 10th, Target will allow customers to take advantage of special mobile-coupon offers on their handsets. In the article, Target.com President Steve Eastman states that Target is one of the first nationwide retailers to start this type of promotion. alqemyiQ is predicting that category managers will need to integrate mobile data analytics into their reporting process and CIOs and their IT departments will need to plan for this huge influx of data that mobile couponing will bring. Read more…