CUSTOMER SUCCESS

“M-Factor’s M3 allows us to make better business decisions. We have been able to interpret and adjust to market activities as they happen.” - Luis Rubi, Senior Consumer Insights Manager, General Mills “We use M-Factor’s state-of the-art applications and models to help us improve the return on marketing investment in individual markets, and across the globe. ” - Stan Sthanunathan, VP Marketing Strategy and Insights, The Coca-Cola Company

Coca-Cola manufactures and distributes over 450 beverage brands in more than 200 countries. In this large, complex, and highly competitive industry, sophisticated marketing tools and analyses are critical to continued global success. M-Factor’s M3 solution allows the company’s Global Knowledge and Insights team to perform consistent marketing analysis and make investment decisions across products, countries, and levers. With M3, the company optimizes its $2.7 million marketing budget and maximizes both volume and profit, for Coca Cola as well as its bottling partners. For example, within a typical country Coca Cola realized an 8% gain in profit as a percent of marketing expense. They also earned an additional $5 million in profits by optimizing their retail pricing strategy in just one country.

General Mills markets some of the world's best loved brands, including Betty Crocker, Häagen-Dazs, Pillsbury, Green Giant, Old El Paso and Cheerios. Their brand portfolio includes more than 100 leading U.S. brands, and on average, U.S. shoppers place at least one General Mills product into their shopping cart each time they visit the grocery store. Sophisticated marketing analytics have long played a large role in planning activities at General Mills, but there was a business need to “operationalize” the process. This meant moving from periodic backward-looking analyses toward continuous assessment of consumer and market response with ongoing scenario evaluation and plan optimization. M-Factor’s M3 solution was selected in 2005 as the only existing solution that delivered on all aspects on the business requirements. The M-Factor solution at General Mills spans multiple channels and fully leverages demand model information within a dynamic planning application. M3 has also helped address challenges of maintaining updated models as marketing executions change over time, new campaigns and tactics are implemented and products launched.