Chicago and Paris – April 26, 2005 – Today’s Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) margins and profits are being threatened by regional and local price practices, fluctuating exchange rates, and local price disparities that create imbalances and can encourage misleading retailer buying tactics. To help mitigate these risks and provide global consumer goods manufacturers with a comprehensive software solution for effectively managing price practices and execution across multiple countries, Information Resources, Inc. (IRI), the leading global provider of enterprise market information solutions for the CPG, Retail, and Healthcare industries today announced availability of the IRI Cross-Border Pricing™ solution.
The announcement was made at the 2005 ECR Europe Conference and Marketplace taking place at the Palais des Congres in Paris, April 26 - 28, 2005.
Available immediately as part of IRI’s Consumer-driven Enterprise Management™ Solutions suite, IRI’s Cross-Border Pricing solution provides a fully-integrated and automated enterprise-class software solution to monitor and manage actual prices market-by-market providing the needed visibility and set of tools to anticipate and reduce complex pricing issues across markets.
According to IRI estimates, anywhere from 5% to 20% of CPG manufacturers’ sales are at risk from post-sale price repayment to retailers due to local pricing practices. IRI’s Cross-Border Pricing solution helps minimize that risk by proactively quantifying financial exposure and pinpointing the causes of variances. Using IRI or any other point of sale (POS) data, the solution enables users to determine how price changes and other actions aimed at reducing exposure are expected to affect volume, revenue, and profit. Once decisions have been made, a series of best-practice rules-based workflows enable manufacturers to push the price adjustments out to the field teams, and then help measure results against plan to track performance over time, ensuring price stays within the set corridors.
The IRI Cross-Border Pricing solution integrates closely with IRI’s MarketInsights™ solution, which for the first time, enables manufacturers to integrate disparate data sources from multiple countries, regions and retailers, as well as internal data from sources like SAP, Siebel, and legacy systems. This powerful solution supports complex calculations and analyses on enormously large data sets, enabling users to extend visibility and control across any number of geographic markets, accounts, and SKUs. The solution combines these insights with IRI’s 20 years of retailer data integration and modeling expertise to provide a closed-loop monitoring and execution environment that helps CPG manufacturers protect or improve margins.
“CPG manufacturers are routinely being blindsided by price adjustment requests because they have little visibility into actual product price from market to market within specific retail accounts, often leaving them exposed to aggressive price pressures and goods diversion practices,” said Bill Nowacki, President of IRI’s Business Performance Solutions Group.
The IRI Cross-Border Pricing solution also works to support improved relations between manufacturers and retailers. The solution’s continuous collection of granular transactional data and use of automated rules and models provides an objective, reliable foundation for discussing prices and their impacts with retail partners. Using these newfound insights, category, marketing and brand managers now can work more effectively with sales and supply chain colleagues; and account managers in the field are better equipped to answer questions and negotiate with customers.
“IRI is providing a level of visibility and decisiveness CPG manufacturers simply have not had in the past,” adds Nowacki. “Not only does the solution enable them to maintain effective price corridors, but also provides immediate insight into price spreads that could be problematic, and the ability to take corrective action prior to the problem ever occurring. Furthermore, the solution also enables manufacturers to find optimal price to maximize sales volume and profitability.”
The IRI Cross-Border Pricing solution is available now and more information is available at: www.infores.com/public/us/solutions/cpgmanf/products/crossborder.htm
About IRI’s Consumer-driven Enterprise Management Software Solutions
IRI’s Consumer-driven Enterprise Management Software Solutions for the CPG industry provide companies the ability to put the insights they have about their consumers to immediate application in driving key business decisions. These solutions provide a unique framework for all phases of planning, performance analysis, and rapid decision making required to optimize brand management, trade promotion, and sales and operations management.
About Information Resources, Inc.
Information Resources, Inc. (IRI) is the leading global provider of enterprise market information solutions for the CPG, Retail and Healthcare industries. IRI is the first company to leverage the power of real-time market information, advanced analytic insights, and enterprise performance management technology to improve the profitability and operational effectiveness of the world’s leading CPG, retail and healthcare companies. The Company uniquely provides a total view of the market, enabling maximum business performance throughout the enterprise. IRI's solutions make the consumer-driven, real-time enterprise possible. More information is available at www.infores.com.
IRI Contact: John McIndoe
E-mail: john.mcindoe@infores.com
Phone: (312) 474-3862
Fax: (312) 474-2592
ECR Europe IRI Contact: Mark Dye
E-mail: mark.dye@infores.com
Phone: +44 1344 746 340