BANGALORE, INDIA: Alberto Culver Company, a manufacturer and marketer of Beauty Care Products has now engaged Infosys for advanced category analytics services. The company has chosen Infosys as a partner for innovation and will conduct a pilot evaluation of advanced category analytics to help it improve pricing, promotions and category management decisions.

"Changing channel dynamics and consumer behavior have made effective management of marketing and promotional spend more important than ever. Our partnership with Infosys, beginning with the pilot program of Infosys' platform, aims to improve the effectiveness of our overall promotion planning and execution process, and ultimately enhance promotional returns and sales growth," said Tony Bender, vice president and CIO, Alberto Culver Company.

According to AMR Research, the average consumer packaged goods (CPG) company plans to spend 14 per cent of its revenue on trade promotion management (TPM) projects in 2009 despite 20 per cent of trade promotion projects failing to meet expectations. Infosys' category analytics solution is claimed to be the industry's first platform that integrates internal, syndicated, point-of-sale and unstructured data to create a single view of the enterprise.

The platform utilizes advanced analytics to generate timely and actionable insights. It can be delivered as a managed service and may also be implemented behind the firewall depending on the client preference.

"Constrained by siloed data sources, disintegrated processes, unsophisticated analytic models, and an inability to gain user adoption on available technology tools, CPG companies have not achieved sufficient ROI on their TPM technology investments," said Sandeep Dadlani, vice president of client services for retail, consumer packaged goods and logistics at Infosys Technologies.

"By addressing these major roadblocks with category analytics, Infosys has empowered CPG companies with greater visibility and enhanced analytics to execute effectively at the shelf at a dramatically lower total cost of ownership."