Comshare Boosts Consumer Packaged Goods Industry

New Application Suite To Bring Integration and Optimization to CPG
Decision-Making

ANN ARBOR, MI, APRIL 2, 1996 -- Comshare, Inc., The Decision Support
Company, is reinforcing its position in decision support for the consumer
packaged goods (CPG) industry with the introduction of BOOST, a new
application suite for CPG. BOOST Sales and Margin Planning, the first
component of the suite to be released, is a brand and customer planning
system for CPG manufacturers that uses proven technology built on
Comshare's successful merchandise and store planning application for
retailers, known as Arthur.

"Comshare has always had a strong presence across the total CPG supply
chain," says Luke Alvarez, BOOST Whole Product Director. "Our Arthur suite
of pre-built applications is the dominant decision support solution for
large retailers, and is used by Wal-Mart, Neiman-Marcus Direct, Disney
Stores and many others. In the CPG manufacturing sector, we previously
have delivered custom decision support solutions to many hundreds of
blue-chip companies including Pepsi, Philip Morris, Kraft Foods and
Johnson & Johnson. Now we feel that the worldwide rollout of Efficient
Consumer Response (ECR) best practice gives us an opportunity to provide a
suite of pre-built applications to the manufacturing sector, focused on
ECR. Our BOOST suite for CPG manufacturing compliments our Arthur suite
for retail, and will reinforce Comshare's position as the premier provider
of decision support to the CPG supply chain.

"The common themes of the BOOST suite of applications are integration and
optimization," continues Alvarez. "In many of the CPG companies that we've
worked with, we found that operational processes such as order processing
and replenishment were becoming well integrated and optimized across the
business functions. But decision support was not."

"Often," he adds, "the account plans, brand volume forecasts, promotions
plans, financial budgets and inventory plans were all in separate systems
-- a variety of spreadsheets, forecasting tools, mainframes and so on.
This means a huge effort to share plans; long, painful planning cycles,
and inaccurate plans with little real operational buy-in."

"Another example is that external and internal data were often not brought
together," says Alvarez. "So the effects of competitor pricing and
promotional initiatives could not easily be correlated with internal
shipments and profits. This could make it hard for CPG manufacturers to
respond to competition in a way that both improves internal brand
performance and boosts customer/account satisfaction."

"There is a need to bring integration and optimization to all these
decision processes," suggests Alvarez. "This is what the BOOST suite does.
With BOOST Sales and Margin Planning, we've addressed the planning
problems by developing a system that allows finance, marketing, sales and
operations to plan in harmony," he continued. "It enables decision-makers
to build more targeted plans that match the right assortment, promotional
and pricing strategies to the right customers. It also instantly
illuminates the effects of alternative plan scenarios on product, customer
and consolidated margins, leading to enhanced efficiency at all levels of
the business. It is a truly cross-functional system."

"If BOOST Sales and Margin Planning can be seen as providing horizontal
integration of planning across the functions," concludes Alvarez, "further
additions to the BOOST product line will provide greater vertical
integration of analysis within each function. Improving the integration of
internal and external data for sales and for marketing is one example of
this."

Comshare's mission is to be the premier provider to consumer packaged goods
manufacturers of integrated DSS applications that improve the quality and
speed of decisions, which increase their market share, growth and
profitability.

Comshare is The Decision Support Company. One of the top 50 software
companies in the world, Comshare develops, markets and supports complete
decision support applications designed to improve business analysis,
planning, reporting and decision making. Comshare decision support
applications result in better decisions, improved profits, and enhanced
competitiveness for its more than 3,000 customers in over 40 countries
worldwide.

For more information about Comshare products and services, call 1-
800-922-7979 or see our home page on the world wide web at
http://www.comshare.com
 
 =========================================================
 From the 'New Product News' Electronic News Service on...
 AOL (Keyword = New Products) and Delphi (GO COMP PROD)
 =========================================================
 This information was processed from data provided by the
 company/author mentioned. For additional details, please
 contact them directly at the address/phone# indicated.
 Trademarks are the property of their respective owners!
 =========================================================
 All submissions for this service should be addressed to:
 BAKER ENTERPRISES,  20 Ferro Dr,  Sewell, NJ  08080  USA
 Email:   rbakerpc@aol.com   --or--   rbakerpc@delphi.com
 =========================================================
