Winner

Automated Market Research

ACNeilsen ORG-MARG Pvt. Ltd has automated its Retail Market Research Services using mobile technology, a central database and the Advisor i-sights Business Intelligence tool.

ACNeilsen’s Retail Measurement Services (RMS) division has achieved net savings in annual operating costs on paper and courier charges of Rs. 27 million after automating its Retail Market Research Services by using mobile technology, a central database and an Advisor i-sights Business Intelligence tool. Today RMS business unit is in a position to justify the report subscription price hike of around 15 percent to their clients because of the benefits offered in terms of reduction in report delivery time and improvement in data quality.

The RMS division is in the business of conducting Retail Store Audit for FMCG products. This retail audit process covers over 1,00,000 Stock Keeping Units (SKUs) spanning across nearly 15 audits such as FMCG, Cold Drinks, Durable Goods, Pharma Products and 100 plus product categories. The audit is conducted by more than 700 permanent field staff that operates from over 150 locations and covers over 65,000 dealers or retail outlets scattered across 450 towns and 1,500 villages.

Looking at the enormity of the scale and reach of business, one can imagine the volume of paper work, effort and cost involved in data entry on a daily basis. Moreover there was a very high chance of inaccuracy in data reporting due to lack of data validation, delayed printing of ledgers and loss of documents when sent through courier service. Bhushan Akerkar, Executive Director-IST, ACNeilsen ORG-MARG Pvt. Ltd. adds, “ACNeilsen ORG-MARG’s old data processing system was on COBOL with which we had issues related to efficiency, flexibility and consolidation. Most client reports were being manually prepared in Excel. And the major issue was to justify the authentication of the information in the audit to the clients, which was not always fool-proof due to limited ways of verification.”

Key products and technologies used
Device	750 HP iPAQ Pocket PC 2110
PDA accessories	Billionton CF 10Base Ethernet, Billionton CF 56K Fax Modem, Lexar 256 MB SD memory card.
Software	Audit Data Collection software developed in-house using Embedded VC++. The database stored in an encrypted Binary format in Oracle 8.7.1
Server hardware	RF (Retail Factory - Main data processing system) Server, Server for HHT & RF bridging, FTP services. HP570 ML, IBM x205, IBM x260 series running on Window 2000/2003.
Connectivity	2 Mbps Internet bandwidth at the data processing centre, Nokia IP 330 with Check Point firewall.
BI tool	Advisor i-sights BI tool developed in VC++ and uses a proprietary back-end database. It also supports any relational database.

To keep pace with the growing business it had become a necessity for the RMS division to reduce audit cycle time, increase data accuracy and quality, increase client satisfaction and reduce survey and operation cost. Akerkar says, “We took more than a year to finalise on the suitable PDA distributor, quoting a feasible price, a flexible operating system and good technical support. Finally, we picked 750 devices of HP iPAQ Pocket PC 2110, a central database and developed shrink wrapped BI tool, Advisor i-sights that empowers clients in generating their own customised reports of the data generated by the company.”

Resolving challenge

Today the solution blends mobile computing at the data acquisition stage and an in-house developed BI technology at the reporting stage. This has become successful only after overcoming a number of challenges. Akerkar addresses, “ During the implementation we discovered that older systems are less resource hungry than the new systems. The new features available in products today utilise processing power, reduce speed and occupy hard disc space even though not in use. We underestimated the hardware sizing.”

The division faced challenges regarding the usage of PDA’s. The issue was of recharging PDA batteries in remote locations of the country where there is either shortage or non-availability of electricity and the other issue was uploading and downloading of data on PDA devices. To solve this issue they used separate battery back-ups. Moreover they provided three levels of helpdesk to the users. These levels included the use of Compaq LAN cards through cyber-cafes, the use of a modem card incase the cyber cafe does not have access to broad band and the third by calling up through a PCO and sending the SDRAM chip by courier.

“The other major initial challenge was to motivate field auditors who have never used a PC to use a PDA. This barrier was resolved by conducting repetitive courses for them to understand and use PDA’s effectively,” states Akerkar.

Task at Hand

Tasks done by the internal IST team: Audit software development, testing, quality checks and release Bridging of HHT and RF system Procurement and device management Setting up the field connectivity Training of operations and 700+ field associates Hand holding with field staff during the transition phase Maintaining a central help desk Tasks outsourced to TVS Electronics: PDA device preparation, device dispatch logistics and administration. Training material preparation and training of 700+ field employees. Setting up and managing a central helpdesk during the deployment period.

Growing Progressively

At present although ACNeilsen ORG-MARG Pvt. Ltd has graduated from paper based to CD based data deliveries, it is still cumbersome to manage and support the growing installed base of 2,500+ users. Hence, the plan is to let clients access and download reports directly from the Web.

Amidst the backdrop of the impending retail boom ACNeilsen plans to enable and extend their data acquisition mechanism to capture data directly from giant organised retail marts such as Big Bazaar. The company envisages escalation in the number of bar-coded products and plans to collect data through PDA fitted bar code scanners.