Businesses with global operations utilize syndicated trade, consumer, media and promotional data from vendors such as Nielsen, IRI, IMS, Walsh America, Millward-Brown (primarily in consumer audits and media), Canadean (Europe, Asia), and AMER (Middle East). Large vendors typically provide information in proprietary formats with built-in reporting tools, whereas smaller vendors provide data in pre-formatted reports without options for analysis.

The Challenge

Recognizing syndicated data as a key information source, an increasing number of businesses are requiring that they be able to load data from these sources into internal data warehouses or data marts for cross-functional and cross-regional analysis. Even though many vendors provide options to load external data into their proprietary formats for cross-functional reporting, the facilities provided are very limited, both in terms of the sophistication of the import, as well as the reporting and analysis features.

The analysis and consolidation of syndicated data presents a unique set of challenges that are very different from typical data integration projects. These challenges include understanding the data extracts and building it into a new/existing business model, understanding the characteristics of the reported performance indicators, accounting for region-specific file formats, mapping and transformation, and harmonizing across data sources and across geographic regions.

Our Unique Advantage

Our extensive experience over several years includes not only in the analysis and deep understanding of syndicated data, but also in the harmonization of the data to the standard master/reference data used in the enterprise. This enables the enterprise to cross query the syndicated data with internal data which is extremely valuable in terms of the insights it generates. This is a skill which very few consulting organizations possess, and one that would be invaluable to any business involved in processing syndicate trade data.

Briefly, our approach requires us to:

• Understand the clients’ business, organization, and standard levels used for analysis.
• Parse the data extract from vendors; recommend enhancements to extract if necessary.
• Map codes into structures relevant to the business; enhance or create standard data (master files) for cross-functional reporting; enhance existing structures as needed.
• Model or enhance dimensional structures.
• Implement cleanup, extraction and load procedures. Our standardized procedures could be integrated with an existing ETL tool if used by the client.
• Perform cross-regional/cross-application harmonization and clean up.
• Implement or enhance a reporting/DSS tool over the integrated model.

Our services are fully customized to client needs. The engagement can include any combination of analysis, modeling, implementation, and knowledge transfer. We possess the experience and the expertise to handle these challenges and manage such projects, both on-site and outsourced at our locations.