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Situation:
ACNielsen
developed a Category Business
Planner (CBP) as a tool to build a
bridge of common information and
insights between retailer and
manufacturer. The intent was to
automate and standardize how
category information is viewed and
analyzed so that management time
could be focused more on strategic
decision-making and less on
non-value added activities.
Challenge:
CBP met some
basic needs of retailers and
manufacturers but uptake had been
slow and there continued to be
demand for more value delivered.
Because ACNielsen wanted to expand CBP into
more robust functionality more
directly tied to creating value but
specific “packaging”, and value-based
prioritization was required. In
addition, ACNielsen required a
better understanding of target
constituents and how they would
value and operate the products’
functionality.
How We Helped:
-
Reviewed
existing research and work done
to-date and interview selected
ACNielsen executives (4-8) to
get input on potential
functionality and to explore
hypotheses on customer value
-
Facilitated internal strategy
team working sessions to better
define and gain consensus on
value hypotheses to test in
customer interviews
-
Developed
interview guides to provide
discussion frameworks for
capturing customer issues,
preferences, value perceptions,
and operation of analytics in
action
-
Created
Delphi follow-up surveys to
quantify value by scoring
relative importance and expected
business impact of analytic
offerings
-
Identified and personally
interviewed 40 manufacturers and
retail executives to:
-
Gain an
outside-in perspective on
preferred functionality,
-
Clearly
define how the functionality
should be packaged;
-
Identify and prioritize the
customer’s perception of value
associated with functionality
-
Analyzed
and synthesized quantitative and
qualitative findings
-
Worked
with ACNielsen's Board to gain
consensus around final
conclusions, prioritizations and
recommendations
-
Developed
a high level business case
illustrating a “go-to-market” strategy
Impact:
The results
from this research not only helped ACNielsen determine its
prioritized indicators of
functionality, but it also
benefited both retailers and
manufacturers.
Management assembled an internal
task force to continue to
collaborate with key manufacturer
and retail executives based on key
research recommendations, so they
could determine where specific
initiatives would drive future value.
By aligning this team to roll-out
recommendations, management used
this collaborative technique as the
centerpiece of its strategic
planning process, and thus, helped ACNielsen to prioritize future
initiatives and continue generating
value for the industry. |
