2012 Readers' Choice: Editors' Picks
Each year, CGT’s editorial staff calls your attention to more than 20 solution and service providers that are poised to make a substantial impact on the consumer good market with innovative yet necessary tools. These companies — some new and some familiar — often don’t fit snugly into CGT’s larger Readers’ Choice categories due to their smaller size or niche focus. Yet, past honorees, like Infosys, have gone on to become market leaders in their categories. So please, take the time to check out our 2012 editors’ picks. Who knows where they can take your business in the future?
1SYNC
www.1SYNC.org
Specialty: 1SYNC specializes in Product Data Management and Data Synchronization.
Biggest Win in 2011: 1SYNC partnered with The Kroger Company to advance the usage of the GTIN with its trading partner community.
Acxiom
www.acxiom.com
Specialty: Marketing services and technology helping global retail and CPG brands successfully manage audiences, personalize consumer experiences and create profitable customer relationships.
Biggest Win in 2011: Expanded its safe haven environment, which provides a medium for advertisers and media partners to use a brand’s insight in the purchase, targeting and measurement of media investments to deliver highly targeted advertising.
Biggest Win in 2011: Expanded its safe haven environment, which provides a medium for advertisers and media partners to use a brand’s insight in the purchase, targeting and measurement of media investments to deliver highly targeted advertising.
AFS Technologies
www.afsi.com
Specialty: AFS Technologies provides profit maximizing software solutions for manufacturers in the CPG industry.
Biggest Win in 2011: AFS acquired Synectics Group and Answers Systems, allowing the company to offer a fully-integrated trade promotion management package, equipped with predictive analytics and trade promotion optimization.
Amber Road
(Formerly Management Dynamics, Inc.)
www.amberroad.com
Specialty: Amber Road is a provider of on-demand Global Trade Management (GTM) solutions. By helping organizations to comply with country-specific trade regulations, as well as plan, execute and track global shipments, Amber Road enables goods to flow unimpeded across international borders in the most efficient, compliant and profitable way.
Biggest Win in 2011: The company officially changed its name to Amber Road on November 15, 2011. Derived from the ancient trading route of the same name, Amber Road more accurately embodies the nature of its business.
Apacheta Corporation
www.apacheta.com
Specialty: Provides CPG companies with flexible mobile applications for route sales/direct store delivery, merchandising, field service, and transportation to streamline operations.
Biggest Win in 2011: Achieved SAP certification as Powered by Sybase® Unwired Platform; introduced Apacheta Online, a cloud-based Software-as-a-Service offering; and added 13 new customers and now has more than 20,000 routes deployed.
Appirio
www.appirio.com
Specialty: Appirio provides services and technology that help companies adopt, extend and connect cloud computing platforms, helping them to become more agile, efficient and capitalize on new mobile and social trends.
Biggest Win in 2011: Appirio continued to expand its CPG customer base with global brands, like L’Oreal, and was honored by the World Economic Forum as a Technology Pioneer.
BT
www.btplc.com
Specialty: BT’s CPG vertical business offers industry-specific services based on a core portfolio encompassing global networking, security collaboration, data center, contact center and mobility. This enables CPG multinationals to focus on globalization, new product development and operational efficiency.
Biggest Win in 2011: BT and GS1 UK developed an iPhone app that lets GS1 members, like Coca-Cola, Heinz, Kraft, P&G, Sainsbury, Tesco and Unilever, check the accuracy of product data held on the Truesource database. BT and GS1 UK are jointly promoting the use of trusted and authenticated product information for mobile scanning apps.
buzz solutions
www.buzzsolutions.com
Specialty: buzz solutions retail buzz product for CPG companies is a superior retail execution/sales force automation solution on force.com.
Biggest Win in 2011: Having just been launched in August 2011, retail buzz has already been selected by a major global manufacturer.
Capgemini
www.us.capgemini.com
Specialty: As a global provider of consulting, technology and outsourcing services, Capgemini helps consumer products and retail companies achieve demand-driven enterprise market leadership.
Biggest Win in 2011: Levi Strauss & Co. selected Capgemini to manage its applications management work around enterprise BI and data warehouse solutions, designed to provide a single, global analysis of its enterprise data.
Context Optional, an
Efficient Frontier company
Efficient Frontier company
www.contextoptional.com
Specialty: Context Optional is a provider of social marketing management solutions for global brands. With Efficient Frontier, it offers a complete solution to acquire, activate and drive value from fans and followers. On November 30, 2011, Adobe announced its intention to acquire the company.
Biggest Win in 2011: With a unified ads and engagement strategy, the Expedia FriendTrips campaign resulted in more than one million Facebook Fans, a 750 percent increase in just six weeks, with a 15-30x increase in engagement.
Datalliance
www.datalliance.com
Specialty: Software-as-a-Service Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) platform that helps CG manufacturers cost-effectively deploy and grow their VMI programs.
Biggest Win in 2011: The Datalliance VMI customer base in the CG industry grew more than 100 percent with the addition of several of the industry’s best known suppliers of CPG operating in both North America and Europe.
Digital Tempus
www.digitaltempus.com
Specialty: Digital Tempus provides process expertise, strategic insight and talent development to help global companies improve strategic and operational planning capabilities. The combination of experience and business intelligence services defines Digital Tempus’ unique approach that supports companies, like Church & Dwight, Co. and McCormick &Co., in their efforts to plan better, improve decision-making, enable more effective execution, and consistently create opportunities to drive profitable growth.
Biggest Win in 2011: In 2011, Darden Restaurants selected Digital Tempus to provide strategic guidance and thought leadership as the company continues a major transformation of its extended supply chain and develops planning capabilities to improve the predictability and performance of the business.
E2open, Inc.
www.e2open.com
Specialty: E2open delivers strategic, cloud-based solutions to enable brand owners and manufacturers to manage end-to-end supply chain processes and to respond intelligently to continuous change in supply, demand and products.
Biggest Win in 2011: E2open added a record number of CPG companies to its customer roster — managing VMI, providing logistics network solutions and improving order management.
Enterra Solutions, LLC
www.enterrasolutions.com
Specialty: Enterra Solutions is a provider of a real-time supply chain Sense, Think/Learn and Act technology platform, enabling intelligent supply chain visibility, compliance, planning and optimization solutions.
Biggest Win in 2011: Enterra launched its Pre-Inventory Prediction Module with Conair Corporation Global CIO John Harding. This module provides real-time shipping visibility, computes the perturbative effects of transit delays on retailer orders, and allows for dynamic pre-inventory allocations of in-transit inventories, while also achieving available-to-promise functionality.
Flowfinity Wireless Inc.
www.flowfinity.com
Specialty: Flowfinity provides software and services for building enterprise mobile apps without programming. CG companies use Flowfinity software to customize mobile forms and workflows for sales processes such as in-store auditing and data collection, time reporting, promotion management and the delivery of sales and marketing collateral to the field. Flowfinity software is available on iPhone/iPad, Android, and BlackBerry smartphones and tablets.
Biggest Win in 2011: Flowfinity customer McCormick & Co. won CGT’s 2011 Customer Management Award for implementing electronic retail audits with Flowfinity Actions on smartphones.
Genpact
www.genpact.com
Specialty: Genpact helps CG companies worldwide achieve business process excellence and make smarter business decisions through customer management, supply chain, analytics and research, and finance and accounting services.
Biggest Win in 2011: A global health and hygiene major realized a $135 million working capital improvement through Genpact’s Smart Enterprise Processes (SEPSM) methodology for Procure-to-Pay processes.
inno360, Inc.
www.inno-360.com
Specialty: SaaS Enterprise Innovation Management Platform; global connection engine to find research, landscape, IP, literature, people, extracts experts, authors; builds innovation ecosystems; expanded to five billion objects.
Biggest Win in 2011: Doubled new customers in Aerospace & Defense, Entertainment and Pharma; extended agreements with The Procter & Gamble Company, General Mills and Airforce Research Lab.
Inspirage LLC
www.inspirage.com
Specialty: A full service global consulting firm specializing in the implementation of systems and processes using Oracle Value Chain Planning applications, including Oracle Demantra Demand Management.
Biggest Win in 2011: Winning two Oracle Titan Awards: Top Regional Systems Implementor - North America and Top Oracle Accelerate Solution - North America; both resulting in a growing CG business.
IronBridge Software
www.ibsw.com
Specialty: For more than 20 years, Ironbridge Software has provided cost-effective business intelligence solutions to the CPG industry. It combines web-based reporting products with Demand Signal Repository expertise to deliver a competitive advantage for the manufacturer, broker and retailer. Ironbridge also offers consulting services to address cost effective enterprise solutions to fit into a CG company’s current sales/marketing/supply chain/IT environment.
Biggest Win in 2011: Ironbridge’s Demand Signal Repository now has integrated downstream data in real time.
LumiData
www.lumidata.com
Specialty: LumiData’s SOLYS software provides a 360-degree perspective of demand for retail sales teams and executives.
Biggest Win in 2011: Implemented a cloud delivery platform providing both SaaS and DaaS, thus enabling the data acquisition layer of LumiData’s Outside-In-Throughout BI Architecture. CG companies can leverage retailer data in multiple channels, data levels and data types.
Relational Solutions, Inc.
www.relationalsolutions.com
Specialty: Relational Solutions specializes in cleansing, validation and integration of point-of-sale (POS) data with internal and syndicated data. Its integration engine is a hub that sends clean data to its enterprise DSR, POSmart or other applications including TPO/TPM that leverage clean POS data.
Biggest Win in 2011: In 2011, IBM selected POSmart foundation to embed in its Enterprise I3 solution.
Selerant
www.selerant.com
Specialty: Selerant’s offerings include DevEX, a web-based Product Lifecycle Management software; Regulatory Scientific Affairs services; and implementation, PLM, NPDI consulting services.
Biggest Win in 2011: Selerant entered into agreements with the Taiwanese Ministry of Economic Development and the Chinese Institute for Food Science and Technology (CIFST) to further Food Safety in China. Regulatory Scientific Affairs is building a food safety law database and offering regulatory expertise services to manage legislation. Selerant is also partnering with Nestl to co-develop a solution to measure the environmental impact of its product portfolio.
StayinFront
www.stayinfront.com
Specialty: Consumer goods CRM solutions for CPG manufacturers and distributors, supporting account selling, retail execution and direct store delivery activities. Includes user-defined KPIs, role-based configuration, two-way messaging, cycle priorities, configurable dashboards, document integration, call planning enhancements and maps integration.
Biggest Win in 2011: StayinFront launched a first-of-its-kind mobile CRM and retail execution application for iPhone, iPad and Android devices.
Telerx
www.telerx.com
Specialty: Telerx builds and protects the world’s most prestigious brands by providing world-class customer care that transforms the customer experience. Telerx’s customized approach to traditional and emerging contact channels fosters loyalty and generates actionable insights.
Biggest Win in 2011: Telerx’s social media and survey solutions — Social Interactions and PulseCheX — won awards in 2011.
ThinkVine
www.thinkvine.com
Specialty: ThinkVine’s marketing optimization software enables B2C marketers to maximize ROI across all marketing investments by simulating how consumers respond to different marketing plans in order to provide better forward-looking guidance than traditional marketing mix.
Biggest Win in 2011: ThinkVine was named a leader in Marketing Mix by an independent research firm.