Customer Management

The Customer Management Award is presented to a consumer goods firm for the successful execution of a sales and/or marketing effort throughout its entire customer base to achieve superior results. This year's winner, Coty, has created the ultimate software and business process strategy that has allowed it to get much closer to its customers and consumers. The company's effective utilization of customer marketing concepts and analytics to advise brand strategies and influence category plans has allowed the company to capture and convert more consumers than ever before.

As one of the world's largest beauty companies with sales of $1.95 billion in 2004, Coty's popular fragrance brands include Jennifer Lopez, Celine Dion, Stetson as well as Calgon bath products. Understanding the value of these brands at the retail level is top of mind at Coty, according to Bob Reinckens, the company's chief information officer. "Data analytics also enables us to build an effective customer relationship. It provides us the opportunity at the SKU level to tell our retailers what their ROI is going to be on that SKU of Stetson aftershave or Calgon bath and body products, for instance," says Reinckens.

On the Coty side, data analytics tells the company what it can expect from a profitability standpoint, which serves up specific action points on the Coty planogram. How should the company position its brands and which items should they refresh? What additional products should Coty add to its planogram? "Data analytics brings you into the game," says Reinckens. "The customer knows you are there and that you are bringing value to them as part of a partnership."

How does Coty get to that level of value? Reinckens says the company's vision is a simple, closed-loop data warehouse that provides the right business information to make an informed decision about its brands and operating policy. "In the case of Celine Dion, we can look at when we might launch the next brand extension," says Reinckens. "From a trade promotions standpoint, we can look at how we can time the actual spending in order to attain the most lift."

Coty uses CAS' CPWerx for Trade Promotions Management in its North American operations. Coty is implementing CPWerx to create a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system that provides consistent, enterprisewide information to sales, marketing and management teams. While CPWerx incorporates a comprehensive suite of applications for Trade Promotions Management, Category Management and Retail Execution, Coty's initial CPWerx roll out focuses on account planning for trade promotions.

Visibility Into Business
"CPWerx is giving us visibility into our business so that we can, for example, continually track how we are performing against plan," says Michael Ferrara, vice president of Customer Marketing at Coty. "This is due in large part to the CPWerx data model, which can integrate data from multiple sources -- such as field-generated, syndicated and point-of-sale data -- into a common database designed for all levels of our organization."

With CPWerx, Ferrara says Coty has the ability to capture a consistent and single view of its business, which enables the company to proactively and efficiently manage accounts, and ultimately reduce promotional expenses through fact-based and intelligent allocation of trade promotion funds. "CAS is helping us to implement and evolve a sophisticated yet practical CRM platform," says Ferrara. "We're honored to have our work with CAS recognized by Consumer Goods Technology."