ACNielsen

ACNielsen Corporation is one of the world's leading providers of market research, information and analysis to the consumer products and services industries. More than 9,000 clients in more than 100 countries rely on ACNielsen's dedicated professionals to measure competitive marketplace dynamics, understand customer attitudes and behaviour. In order to continually improve its performance, ACNielsen Emerging Markets in the U.S. has equipped data collectors in its Retail Measurement Services division with Fujitsu's Pen Computers.

The Challenge

In today's information age, the most successful market research companies are those that produce data of the highest quality. This is what differentiates ACNielsen, the world's leading provider of market research, information and analysis to the consumer products and services industry, from its competitors. The company wanted to reduce operating costs, improve the quality of the data produced by its Retail Measurement Services division, and speed up delivery of the end product to customers.

The Solution

Equipping 300 data collectors with Fujitsu's Pen Computers that allow more accurate and faster data collection, enable ACNielsen to provide an even higher quality product to customers, and in a shorter timeframe. The mobile solution offers a significantly faster, less expensive and more accurate process than the company's previous paper-based approach. This required ACNielsen data collectors to visit supermarkets and stores across the country and fill in forms detailing stock levels and product prices. The data collectors would then fill out a paper form with this data, but this still needed to be sent to the company's offices and the data entered onto the company's computer systems.

The Benefits

Increased efficiency and productivity, together with the ability to create new, innovative products and improve customer satisfaction through faster delivery of data, means the solution provides a fast return on investment. The company expects that the solution will pay for itself through reduced operating and support costs in as little as 12 months. "We estimate that the increased efficiency which the solution is capable of delivering will result in a 10% reduction in our field operating expenditure. We expect a further 15% benefit through cost avoidance once the system is fully utilised," says Aris Yiangopoulos, Operations Manager, Emerging Markets.