Increasing Customer Understanding and Profitability

CONSUMER GOODS (CG) COMPANIES ARE FACING UNPRECEDENTED COMPETITION for retailers and distributors. Customer turnover is often the result of the CG company's lack of actionable information that can provide insight as to why customers have been lost to competitors, how to prevent this turnover and how to improve account retention, improve marketing effectiveness to increase sales and determine new processes to positively impact bottom line growth. This is often compounded by a lack of insight into sales and marketing operations. Even in this environment, however, there is opportunity to find competitive advantage by implementing technology that delivers three key benefits: understanding channels; sales and marketing execution; process monitoring and analysis.

It seems readily apparent that, in a competitive market, a CG company's success requires an understanding of its retail customers, as well as the channels through which products are delivered to those customers. And it would seem all too clear that the CG company's ultimate goal -- increased profitability for itself -- is largely dependent on the ability to increase the profitability of its customers. Yet, as the Aberdeen Group reported in its Market-to-Order Research Agenda, 2005 -- The Sell-Side Research Agenda, "The vast majority of companies still have no appreciable understanding of their customers, despite the vast sums being spent on analytic tools and techniques."