Manufacturing

With the advent of personalized digital marketing, social and mobile engagement, and rich consumer insights, brands now have an unprecedented ability to engage directly with consumers, shifting the balance of power between manufacturers and retailers. This month, we asked Cassandra Moren, senior director, CG & Retail Solutions Industry Marketing, Oracle, to weigh in on this unstoppable trend.

As much as reputation leaders (most frequently the senior communicator, chief marketing officer or the head of business strategy) would like to be able to tell CEOs and board members that everything is under control, the fact is when it comes to stakeholder relationship management, everything is not under control. Although most companies agree that reputation management is important, relatively few have figured out what to do about it.

McCormick's new digital service, FlavorPrint, is a testament to the role that collaboration (both internal and external) plays when it comes to delivering meaningful consumer experiences both online and off.

In order to grow market share, the company embarked on a mobile solution strategy in March 2007 that would abandon its 100 percent paper-based retail execution system.

Mobile commerce will grow exponentially during the 2013 holiday season with consumers buying at home and in store via their phone. In fact, mobility will drive e-commerce sales gains of between 13 percent and 15 percent. Today's sales and marketing strategies, therefore, need to acknowledge the mobile device not as a "channel" but rather as gateway to multiple channels.

In order to address allergen management concerns, Kraft Foods Canada scans each label after it has been attached on the packaging line to ensure that it matches the package contents. But the laser scanner type ID readers used in the past to inspect the company' barbeque sauce products were subject to read failures. Find out how Kraft solved the problem by switching to image-based DataMan 300 ID readers.

A spin-off would create a stand-alone, publicly traded health care company with approximately $1.6 billion in annual net sales and leading market positions in both surgical and infection prevention products and medical devices.

The global paint and coatings company uses Terra Technologys solution to reduce forecast error by an additional 25 percent.