Manufacturing Solutions

Channel Performance

Manufacturers have in the past focused primarily on operational excellence as a critical dimension of competitive success. Today the race is on to achieve sales and marketing superiority through selling models that are cost-effective and that create real value. For manufacturers, achieving channel control requires unique business insight that can only be gained from real-time transaction analysis coupled with deep analysis of developing business trends.

In recent years, manufacturers have increasingly struggled to gain control over the distribution channel. Without insight into demand fluctuations, manufacturers cannot determine appropriate inventory levels in the channel. This issue of channel control has really emerged as a core challenge for the industry today.

At the most basic level, the best way to achieve channel control is to have visibility into all channel activity, and the key to gaining visibility across the channel is having timely, consistent, and complete data.

Solution Description

This holistic view of the channel is necessary to determine wholesaler compensation, reveal secondary market activity, and assess overall channel performance. And that is where a powerful business intelligence (BI) solution like Panorama NovaView can help. With timely, consistent, and accurate results gleaned using Panorama’s BI tools, the manufacturer can extract previously unavailable business insights, apply corrective action immediately back into the transaction stream, close the loop between policies and transaction decisions, and anticipate changes in business conditions.

For instance, reports can be developed that show secondary sourcing, sideways movement of products, excessive returns, and even the true cost of distributing product through the channel. It’s also possible to continuously monitor sales performance by product, brand, customer, and channel. The next step is to analyze sales trends and customer buying behavior, and report on product margin performance, customer satisfaction and campaign effectiveness.

Because of the complexity involved in performing these analyses in the pre-BI era, it was usually analysts who interfaced with the data. With Panorama dashboards, managers no longer have to rely on analysts and can make proactive decisions based on information parameters that they define.

Jelly Belly Candy Company

"With the Panorama and Microsoft solution, we have much better data visibility. The information is right there on the laptop for everyone to see. You can drill down in real time and you can get the information that you need. As a result, we've slashed the time of our product review meetings by about 75 percent!"

Dan Rosman, Director of Information Technology
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