CHICAGO and SAN FRANCISCO – Feb. 28, 2006 – In a retail marketplace, the pressures, such as competition from new formats and changing consumer preferences, are more severe than ever, so retailers must continually re-invent their operations to fend off competition and get closer to their customers. To help retailers address these burgeoning issues, Information Resources, Inc. (IRI), the leading global provider of enterprise market solutions, today announced the IRI Consumer-Centric Merchandising™ (CCM) Suite for Retailers. The new solution takes decision making to the next level by integrating shopper and market data with predictive analytics to provide retailers with the next generation in consumer demand intelligence.
CCM empowers retailers to tailor merchandising strategies and tactics to meet the needs of consumer segments and local markets, allowing them to drive customer loyalty, reduce out of stocks and increase sales and profits.
Built on leading-edge technology that leverages the IRI Business Performance Management (BPM) platform, the enterprise-class suite of solutions provides retailers with new insights about their shoppers, enabling better decisions to grow their business by leveraging these insights in the critical areas of category planning, assortment optimization, space automation and price and promotion optimization.
“CCM does more than just provide insights into disparate data sources,” said IRI President and Chief Executive Officer Scott W. Klein. “It also utilizes predictive analytics technology, enabling retailers to create multiple ‘what-if’ scenarios, allowing them to make the best decisions to improve their revenue and profit potential.”
Offering Complete End-to-End Category Planning
IRI Category Planning™ provides a single solution for retailers to assess their category potential for all customer segments. The solution brings together multiple data sources, along with all the factors and information that can affect performance, including internal financial metrics, market share and opportunity gaps, customer loyalty, penetration, and consumer bias. It then takes it one step further by providing automatic role assignment, self-monitored scorecarding, and on-line collaboration.
Optimal Assortment Drives Consumer Satisfaction
IRI Assortment Planning™ has been designed and built specifically for retailers to integrate competitive market data with transferable demand analytics, providing category managers the only solution where they can compare different assortment scenarios side by side, selecting the best product mix to maximize their revenue and profit opportunity, while satisfying key customer segments and ensuring customer loyalty.
Turning Planning into Action at the Store Shelf
Directly integrated with the other components of the CCM solution, the IRI Store-Specific Space Automation™ capability rapidly generates optimized planograms by applying the retailer’s merchandising rules and category assortments to the particular characteristics of each store. The solution enables retailers to optimize the performance of every inch of retail shelf space and improve category performance and customer reach.
Effective Price and Promotion Leads to Greater Returns
From building marketing calendars and vendor deal and promotion offer management to advertising and everyday price optimization, IRI Price and Promotion Manager is the only solution in the market that puts the retailer in control of their entire pricing and promotion process. The entire process is supported by advanced modeling that forecasts the sales impact of all advertising, promotion and media activities, other than price, by incorporating all the variables that can affect lift, which lets retailers see the effect of their promotions and price changes before they reach the shelf.
For more information on these solutions, visit: http://us.infores.com/page/retailers/consumer_merchandising
About Information Resources, Inc.
Information Resources, Inc. (IRI) is the world’s leading provider of enterprise market information solutions and services, empowering its clients to grow their business profitably in a complex marketplace. Driving the transformation of the consumer packaged goods (CPG), retail, and healthcare industries, only IRI provides a unique combination of real-time market content, advanced analytics, enterprise performance management software, and professional services. The company’s portfolio of services, solutions, and technology enable leading retailers and their suppliers around the globe to see what they are missing, act faster with greater confidence and win at the shelf. Ninety-five percent of the FORTUNE Global 500 in CPG and retail leverage IRI to power their business. For more information, visit http://us.infores.com.