WEDNESDAY, JULY 11, 2007

Turning Data into Insights: Doing it Right and Making an Impact

Scott Bennewitz, Shopper Insights Solution Executive, IBM

Robert Clint, Marketing and Customer Analytics Associate Partner, IBM Global Business Services

Guy Blissett, Consumer Products Industry Leader, IBM Institute for Business Value

It is only an insight if you use it. The theme for this three-hour workshop will be enabling your organization to develop and apply differentiating insights across the business. 

Questions to be addressed include: how to harmonize and integrate both internal and external data to support key analyses and decision-making; how to drive superior analytics across the whole enterprise; how to overcome the challenges of insufficient and inaccurate data; and how to become an insight-driven organization by embedding analytics into business processes. This workshop promises to be interactive and informative and will leverage video and slide-based case studies that address real client situations, challenges and responses. There is guaranteed to be much discussion around the current marketing environment, underlying issues, drivers, imperatives and the likely evolution/adoption of data management capabilities. Context areas for the workshop will be CP-Retailer collaboration, customer management, consumer management, and product innovation. 

As part of the workshop IBM will lead participants through a multidimensional self-assessment to determine their current maturity in areas such as information maturity and information integrity; data management and analysis; organizing for insights; assessing culture and governance; and measuring the return on insights investment. The workshop leaders will discuss and review the self-assessment results providing comparisons with current industry leading practices and position capabilities within an overall information maturity profile.  Case studies will be used to support for those practices. To conclude, there will be a brief presentation of leading edge technologies for developing and driving shopper insights.

ABOUT THE WORKSHOP LEADERS
Scott Bennewitz: Scott has 20 years of experience in the Consumer Products industry.  Currently he leads IBM's Sales and Marketing Solution business for the Consumer Products Industry worldwide.  Previously, he led IBM's Consumer Products consulting practice in Europe with a focus on Sales and Marketing business process improvement initiatives. Prior to joining IBM, Scott held successive sales and brand management positions at Frito-Lay.

Guy Blissett: Guy has more than seven years of consumer products industry strategy consulting experience working with the leading global consumer products firms on logic-based pricing, strategy, market-entry strategy, and customer management.  In his current role, Guy leads IBM's research efforts on consumer products industry issues, drivers and challenges, developing points of view on the future of the industry and appropriate responses to emerging and existing issues. Guy's current areas of focus are Shopper Insights and Traceability.

Robert Clint has more than 22 years of experience in all aspects of the IT systems lifecycle, solution development and delivery, project and program management, practice development and management, marketing and sales support, and client relations.  He is a leader of IBM's Business Intelligence and Information On Demand delivery efforts in the Consumer Products industry, and he has contributed extensively to the development of the IBM Shopper Insights Platform (SIP) solution, which integrates manufacturer, retailer, and syndicated market data to provide deep insights into how manufacturers can best influence sales of their products through their retail partners.  Mr. Clint is also experienced in implementing IBM's Retail Business Intelligence Solution (RBIS.)  Prior to joining IBM, he led Computer Sciences Corporation's national data warehouse and data management practice.