Marketing Data System
in Samsung Electronics Polska

Samsung Electronics Polska is a world leader in designing and selling a wide range of product groups. The company wants to become a flexible supplier of
high-tech solutions which fully meet the market requirements. The main emphasis is laid on the Consumer Electronics Department (household appliances and audio/video devices) which brings the highest profits to the company (the department’s turnover amounted to PLN719.8M in 2006).


“All the commissioned works were done in a professional and reliable manner, with the highest accuracy, on a high content-related level, in accordance with the agreed schedule and with maintenance of the established costs.”

Anna Gembacka
Marketing Manager



Challenges

• A necessity to implement a solution which would integrate the promoters’ (trade marketers who are responsible for products and brand exposure in points of sale) actions and the data collected by them into a unified environment, emerged in Samsung. Moreover, there was a need to enable generation of special analyses for the management board.
  
• No applications supporting work in this domain had been used in Samsung so far. Data was collected and written down manually, and then entered into spreadsheets. It took up one working day each week.
• Another problem was that the collected information was not fully used. In order to eliminate all the above-mentioned issues, Samsung decided to implement Marketing Data System(MDS).
  
  
  

Solution

• MDS is a system particularly designed to support the trade marketers’ work.
• The system consists of a central part (available through any web browser), which is operated by office employees in the company headquarters. It can be used for: planning and monitoring the trade marketers’ work, checking their current and periodical work performance, collecting and analysing data from the market (such as distribution or share of particular products on shop shelves), verifying loyalty problems as well as ad hoc reporting.
• The other part of the system, installed on notebooks (Pocket PCs), is operated by field employees and enables full online/offline work with GPRS/UMTS connection. Using this part of the system, employees enter and archive the collected data as well as inform their managers about the current market status.

Business benefits

• Cost reduction
  The deployment of MDS enabled us to react to the market changes more quickly, allowing for the reduction of operational costs as well as business processes improvement. Thanks to the MDS deployment, Samsung gained the advantage over its competitors.
• Time savings
  The MDS deployment allowed to save one working day each week which had been spared for gathering and archiving the data collected by trade marketers. From now on, they can use this additional day for their regular work.
• Adaptation to the client’s needs
  The application was customized to the client’s needs with regard to its functionality. That is why it lays stress on what is, from the modern sales point of view, most important in this field: the operational efficiency, productive use of information as well as effective and personalised sales actions.
• Access to information
  The integration of data coming from multiple sources, in one computer system enables the management staff to perform efficiently. The possibility to create analyses and reports quickly was achieved which allows to satisfy the most advanced controlling requirements. Such a solution directly supports taking decisions and managing the company.
• Development
  The system’s technology enables constant improvements and adaptations to the evolving client’s needs. Samsung is already planning sequential opportunities of using new functions of the program in the future. The MDS deployment allowed to fully use the potential provided to business by the state-of-the-art technology.
  
  

Technologies:

.NET Framework 2.0
ASP.NET
Infragistics
SQL Server 2005
.NET Compact Framework 2.0
Windows Mobile Forms
SQL Server 2005 CE