Why You Need POS Marketing Analytics

Distribution — A Historical Perspective

Over 33 years ago I was working for a regional wholesale distributor of pharmaceuticals.

The era of pharmaceutical distributor consolidation was upon us and management readied itself for a high stakes fight. In order not to be taken over by a much larger organization, they began adopting technologies to improve our core business processes.

First, we researched, acquired and implemented computerized order entry, financial reporting and inventory accounting systems to enable more efficient customer service. Then we consolidated four of our regional warehouses into one, and organized the one large warehouse layout in order to gain additional efficiencies. Our last big improvement was to implement an inventory management and replenishment system based on ‘formulas’ designed to predict sales, reduce carrying costs and order in economical quantities.

All of these steps were taken in order to catch up with and — hopefully — beat our competition.

We didn’t realize it — at the time — but much of what we had done to give ourselves a competitive advantage is now called business analytics. In 1980, we just called it our inventory and purchasing management system. 

The bottom line is that we were able to drive up the value of the company, so that when the inevitable acquisition happened, we were one of the most highly valued business units in the acquiring company’s portfolio. The entire ownership and management team had built a high-performance company by applying analytics to business problems. 

I was reminded of this history, when I recently came across several links to books and websites devoted to Analytics. 

Sources of Information 

For example, in March, 2007, Thomas Davenport and Jeanne Harris published, ‘Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning’ (Harvard Business School Press). According to the authors, “At a time when companies in many industries offer similar products and use comparable technology, high-performance business processes are among the last remaining points of differentiation.” 

To learn more about this publication, please click on the line in Note 1 below:

POS Analytics 

OnTrak’s applications collect and store large amounts of data pertaining to our customers’ POS marketing programs. When POS data is sorted and correlated to our customers’ sales data — collected for the same period of time — patterns emerge that can be used to become even more competitive by providing predictive information, through our analysis and reporting tools, to suggest which retail marketing promotions are most highly correlated to sales improvement.

Although automating the process of POS ordering and production is often the initial motivating factor determining the adoption of OnTrak’s software for POS Tracking, Measuring and Managing, can quickly become the primary value of these systems.

The potential to learn which promotions delivered at the point-of-sale provide the greatest impact on sale is our premier value proposition. Predicting which POS marketing initiative will have the most dramatic impact on sales and market share is indeed among the last remaining points of differentiation, providing a powerful business advantage to those beverage alcohol providers who employ such systems.  

For more information about OnTrak's POS Tracking software and our analysis and reporting tools, please click the following button: