PITTSBURGH -- Management Science Associates Inc. (MSA) and SymphonyIRI Group Inc. are forming an alliance that will bring the SymphonyIRI AllScan Convenience Store Tracking Service to the convenience distributor community through MarketView on Demand, a web-based application that offers best-practice insights based on data captured by AllScan.
MSA will act as the exclusive reseller of MarketView on Demand's projected consumer takeaway data, delivering valuable convenience marketplace performance, benchmark, price and promotional information through its Dataservices portal.
"Creating an affordable and agile offering of SymphonyIRI's industry-standard AllScan projected scanner data for the distributor community is yet another advancement in equipping wholesalers with critical marketplace data to help them understand and grow their business," said Suzy Silliman, managing director of MSA's Information Management Solutions Division. "The wholesaler has a wealth of enterprise and shipment-oriented data available but has always been reliant on its suppliers for consumer purchase data. MarketView on Demand will equip distributors who want to be self-sufficient and provide visibility into 'black holes' like retail pricing and item performance within DSD (direct-store delivery) and hybrid categories."
Kevin O'Malley, senior vice president of content product management for SymphonyIRI, said, "MSA supports a network of more than 3,000 wholesaler sites and has the infrastructure in place to deliver relevant views into the AllScan data tailored to the needs of distributor subscribers. SymphonyIRI sees this as a tremendous opportunity to increase the use of AllScan throughout the channel and reinforce it as the 'single source' of convenience store insights across manufacturers, distributors and retailers."
MarketView on Demand will be available from MSA with trended weekly data in a variety of time aggregates in the reports starting with first-quarter 2013. Available reports include Product Performance Rankings within each SymphonyIRI category for total United States, four census regions and eight SymphonyIRI regions. MSA can align SymphonyIRI's more than 300 categories to NACS' categories as an enhancement to the basic offering upon request. In addition to item rankings within categories, the reports include cross category performance and growth and new emerging products tracking.
AllScan offers a 100%, point-of-sale (POS)-based sample. It helps manufacturers, distributors and retailers improve category management effectiveness and retail execution. SymphonyIRI receives data from more than 19,000 scanning stores generating granular coverage of the entire TDLinx/NACS-defined channel, including all of the more than 149,000 independents, small chains and large chain stores.
MSA's Dataservices portal is the web destination where wholesalers manage their store/item-level MSA data submissions for critical trade dollars and category management activities, track their promotional product distribution goals, access shipments-data benchmarks and leverage MSA reporting solutions for competitive advantage.
Chicago-based SymphonyIRI Group is a global leader in solutions and services for the consumer packaged goods (CPG), retail and healthcare industries. SymphonyIRI uniquely combines powerful market and shopper information, predictive analytics, flexible technology solutions and consulting services to help its clients drive and grow their businesses.
MSA is a leader in data management, integration and analysis in the CPG, media and metals industries. Combining its expertise with the tools of information management, analytics, data management and software and systems technology, MSA develops, integrates, implements and maintains products and services in various functional and vertical domains. Within processes, departments, across large and small enterprises and throughout demand and supply chains, MSA helps customers put their data to work.
MSA's Information Management Solutions (IMS) Division specializes in the development of software and other systems that facilitate the collection, processing, analysis and delivery of business data and information. Data sources managed by MSA include distributor shipments, inventory and reference data, as well as manufacturer shipments, syndicated sources and consumer takeaways.
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