Press Releases

Archives (2005 to 2008)


	3/25/2009 IRI Unveils Predictive Analytic Offerings to Power "Full Circle", Prescriptive, CPG Pricing and Promotion Management New IRI Price Advantage™ and IRI Trade Advantage™ Feature Issue-Driven Dashboards That Enhance Value by Linking Insights to Business Processes IRI Foresight™ Integrates Macroeconomic Information into Business Planning LAS VEGAS, March 25, 2009 - Information Resources, Inc. (IRI) today released three new predictive analytic offerings to address current pricing and promotion challenges resulting from today's high-risk economic climate. IRI Price Advantage™, IRI Trade Advantage™ and IRI Foresight™ are next generation price, promotion management and strategic business planning solutions for consumer packaged goods (CPG) manufacturers and retailers. These new innovations provide continuous, repeatable and prescriptive analytics to optimize a wide range of business needs, including pricing, trade promotion, as well as branded and private label marketing decisions. IRI announced these new solutions at the "Summit 2009: Reinventing CPG and Retail Conference" being held at the Wynn Las Vegas. IRI's portfolio of predictive analytic solutions evolves from its deep experience with predictive business tools, now formally offered as a component of its integrated industry insight offerings. Obtainable as stand-alone solutions, IRI today provides CPG companies with the agility to quickly make forward-looking business decisions based on integrated data, measurable observations and reliable forecasts. As a result, companies can harness previously unavailable pricing and promotion insights and empower executives to foresee the impact of pricing strategies on their brand performance as well as review the success of past events. "IRI's new solutions assist CPG leaders in 'knowing' the customer and gaining the ability to dynamically and immediately act on new insights to drive forward-looking business decisions and competitive advantage," said IRI Executive Vice President and Global Managing Director of Modelling and Analytic Solutions, Patrick Cummings. "IRI's Analytic Advantage portfolio of solutions delivers a massive step change for the industry at large and will enable clients to produce thousands of models at much lower cost in a fraction of the time. More importantly, these models can now populate rich pricing, sales planning, branded and private label marketing, assortment, innovation and forecasting solutions to drive improved performance." Issue-Driven Dashboards Provide Greater Analytical Value An important new capability of the IRI Price Advantage and IRI Trade Advantage solutions are issue-driven dashboards that provide immediate information on client-specific issues. These dashboards are designed to help senior-level executives identify what's happening within their business, better understand how these issues are impacting the company, and implement strategies to address them. Leveraging analytics and data around a company's most pressing business issues, these dashboards increase the value of insights around price diagnostics, price simulation, price optimization, promotion simulation, post-event analysis and annual planning. IRI Price Advantage Ensures Pricing Strategies Stay On-Track IRI Price Advantage provides Web-based, real-time analysis of pricing sensitivities, price point and price gaps, thresholds and competitive implications in order to maximize sales, margins and drive overall brand management and sales lifts. This is accomplished by leveraging IRI store-level regression models and regular baseline data updates to provide timely and relevant information. As a result, users can map out the impact of price changes across multiple geographic regions, viewing how consumers in one part of the country may react compared to another. Other features that improve effectiveness, productivity and efficiency include return on investment (ROI) comparison across scenarios, cross elasticity models across the portfolio and category, as well as the ability to create unique optimizations based on maximizing revenue or profit. IRI Trade Advantage Enhances Retailer Promotion Strategies IRI Trade Advantage enhances the trade planning process by providing fact-based drivers of promotional performance via an easy to use Web-enabled interface. For example, users can evaluate post-promotion results versus initial plans to measure the success of events and to confirm that promotion strategies stay on track. The robust, simple and integrated planning application delivers actionable insights at the execution level for continuous, repeatable results, driven by: Historical data summaries and lift tables to create and save Event Planning Calendars to a retailer's Promotion Event Library Post Promotional Analysis based on client-specific business issues Past trade activity with weekly breakouts of volume history down to the account level Specific benefits of IRI Trade Advantage and IRI Price Advantage include: Gives executives an immediate, comprehensive picture of product activity and performance with a dashboard approach Improves investment effectiveness by identifying and implementing strategies that generate higher levels of sales and profits Augments execution and compliance by identifying specific, measurable and actionable metrics that will result in improved execution performance Drives efficiencies by increasing the capacity of analytic tools and processes to support the CPG organization Enhances productivity by focusing teams on producing strategic and tactical insights versus simply mining data Upgrades quality of strategies by improving cross-channel and portfolio sales and marketing plans IRI Foresight Integrates Econometrics into Business Planning and Budgeting IRI Foresight strengthens the ability of CPG companies to make sound business and strategic planning decisions by assessing the effects of macroeconomic activity, such as inflation, unemployment rates, property values and availability of credit on consumer spending. By considering external factors influencing consumer purchasing behavior, IRI Foresight allows companies to forecast the impact of economic trends on their brands in order to make timely and accurate business and strategic decisions. IRI Foresight tracks 400 economic indicators, identifies those factors most relevant for brand or category growth, and makes forecasts with a horizon of up to five years. IRI Foresight facilitates the development of risk mitigation strategies, giving companies the ability to apply these insights to adjust promotions, merchandising and other activities. It also enables CPG companies to conduct scenario analyses, factoring in potential changes to the economy and their effects on category and brand growth. Specific benefits of IRI Foresight include: Incorporates macroeconomic activity into existing panel and scan data analysis Facilitates strategic planning by predicting future shopper behavior based on changing economic conditions Enables more robust risk mitigation strategies that help CPG companies uncover new opportunities Helps executive management determine which categories provide the best market opportunities Includes the widest breadth of economic factors available "IRI recognizes there are multiple factors influencing how shoppers spend their money," said IRI Consulting and Innovation President Thom Blischok. "IRI Foresight demystifies these pressures by tracking up to 400 economic indicators. We utilize these insights to generate statistical forecasts about brand success to help companies perform risk mitigation. IRI can help CPG companies look at where their company is today and accurately plan for appropriate brand, trade and promotional spend based on solid econometrics." About Information Resources, Inc. IRI is the world's leading provider of consumer, shopper, and retail market intelligence and insights supporting 95 percent of the FORTUNE Global 500 consumer packaged goods (CPG), retail and healthcare companies. Only IRI offers the unique combination of integrated market information, automated and predictive analytics, innovative enabling technologies, and domain expertise. With IRI, leading retailers and manufacturers are able to quickly discover breakthrough insights driving smarter decisions and actions across the enterprise for breakthrough results. Companies around the world depend on IRI for improved productivity, stronger brands, and dramatic revenue growth. For more information, visit http://us.infores.com. # # # IRI CONTACTS: John McIndoe E-mail: john.mcindoe@infores.com Phone: (312) 474-3862 Fax: (312) 726-1091 Shelley Hughes E-mail: shelley.hughes@infores.com Phone: (312) 474-3675 Fax: (312) 726-1091

Archives (2005 to 2008)

IRI Unveils Predictive Analytic Offerings to Power "Full Circle", Prescriptive, CPG Pricing and Promotion Management