M-Factor News

As a user of the M3 Marketing Investment Management solution, we hope you find the the following information helpful. 

M3 May '08 Release Update

The May M3 release contains numerous feature enhancements. The list below contains several that may be of greatest interest to M3 users:

  • A new, ediTable P&L view that dynamically updates results based on changes to planned spending levels has replaced the budget editor view.  In the new view, the user can select a P&L format depending on the desired level of detail, and then directly edit line items that reflect budgetary decisions.  The user may edit line item values or increments/decrements to the current values to see the impact on the dependent items such as volume and revenue.  In the hypothetical example illustrated below, a material increase in coupon activity with offsetting media reductions has improved both volume and marketing margin.

    Example P&L budget editor
     

  • Users now have the ability to create and maintain "private" reports. When saving reports, the user has the option to mark the report as private. As expected, these private reports are not visible to other M3 users. This provides an opportunity for users to save their preferred report settings without cluttering the M3 reports gallery for other users. 
     

  • The System Summary (accessed via the Help link in M3) has been improved to show the complete Volume Decomposition and Volume Variance driver grouping hierarchies. This hierarchical layout of the data improves the user's visibility into how the underlying data was configured and how the drivers are being used in the M3 system.

    M3 Feature Spotlight

    Many marketers and researchers regularly use volume variance ("due-to") reports to evaluate year-to-date (YTD) actual results vs. the comparable prior year period.  However, we often find that not enough are using this same analysis technique to evaluate the current plan vs. YTD actuals, or to compare the plan vs. forecast performance over the rest of the year.  Both of these analyses are easily accomplished using M3's Volume Variance by Driver report by simply changing the comparison scope.  The causality behind any differences in variance quickly becomes apparent with such an analysis.  In the latter case, this information enables proactive course correction and plan improvements.

    Example scenario list

    The report has flexible settings that enable users to show more or less driver detail, to select from multiple driver grouping options, or even to assign specific drivers to Base or other buckets.   

    Coming Soon

    We are pleased to soon be adding a new simulation view that is designed to offer a streamlined interface to those with straightforward planning situations.  With fewer complexities to manipulate, scenario input and simulation results are displayed side-by-side with last year's information for easy comparison and quick iteration. Watch for more information on this new capability in next month's newsletter after its general release.