DSR Validated by Two Major Newcomers

Kara Romanow

5/5/2008

As the consumer goods (CG) industry moves toward demand-driven strategies, the need for demand data becomes more acute. As retailers have become more open to sharing certain data, companies have turned towards point-of-sale (POS) data for input. Historically, this account-level activity data was used by sales, and later, category managers. But many companies are moving toward a more strategic view of demand data that can be leveraged throughout the enterprise. Now, the vision includes not just sales and marketing, but supply chain, S&OP, innovation/R&D and more.

But what kind of platform supports this holistic vision? Enter the Demand Signal Repository, or DSR, which is a central repository designed to manage, cleanse, normalize, aggregate, analyze and make all types of demand data actionable. The ultimate vision extends beyond POS to include EDI transactional data, shipment data, VMI/CPFR collaborative data, RFID and even loyalty card data.

Up until recently, most of the technology vendors offering DSR solutions were smaller companies that focused solely on this space. Some are more oriented toward sales and marketing, while some are building complete enterprise solutions, but the seemingly sudden demand for this data has caused the spotlight to be placed firmly in this space. As a result, we are starting to see vendor consolidation, like Decisions Made Easy being acquired by The Nielsen Company, Verisign's Retail Data Services acquired by Retail Solutions (formerly T3Ci), and even more vendors forming partnerships to bring solutions to market

What we have been waiting for, however, is for the big boys to jump in the game - and that is what is finally starting to occur. Within the last few weeks, two major technology providers, Teradata and Oracle, have made major announcements about new DSR solutions.

Teradata released its Manufacturing Logical Data Model years ago, but never really put the rest of the pieces for a complete DSR together in one package until now. This new solution includes partnerships with Shiloh and Relational Solutions to round out the offering, providing robust data management capabilities combined with flexible end-user tools to analyze the data. All, of course, optimized for the Teradata database structure, already in use in many high-volume applications in the industry.

Oracle's entry is a welcome addition to the market, as one of the leading ERP and technology vendors finally puts a stake in the ground. The Oracle DSR announcement was made alongside several other supply chain announcements and may have gotten overlooked, but we expect this product to have a big impact on the industry as the roll-out progresses. Oracle worked closely with several large CG companies to pilot this product with very promising results, and they now have a good understanding of the complete vision and requirements for this market.

The bottom line is that as CG companies look toward developing a DSR model, they need to be very cognizant of the ultimate purpose for their DSR solution. If it is truly going to be the central source for demand data for the entire organization, then the requirements are very different than, for example, a solution that will be used by the sales organization for account management. Many companies have made decisions toward the latter in hopes of buying some time, but not many can afford to wait much longer before they are passed by their competition that have figured out how to truly exploit demand signals. Having two new options from major technology players won't hurt the market's momentum either!

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