LSI Logic Leverages CMR Channel Pos Data to Design Custom Marketing Campaigns and Drive New Business
Company Info
LSI Logic is an innovator in the semiconductor and storage systems markets. Their system-on- a-chip integration technologies and portfolio of intellectual property building blocks have laid a foundation for success in the global semiconductor market. Founded in 1981, the company’s 2006 market cap is $3.7 billion. LSI offers three enabling system-on-a-chip technologies, platform ASICs, standard-cell ASICs, and standard products, as well as host bus adapters and supporting software for its global customer base.
The Challenge
In-depth knowledge of the customer and point-of-sale activity is a critical aspect of any successful marketing and sales strategy. Having an accurate, up-to-date snapshot of the customer base is especially vital to up selling opportunities.
This kind of timely, reliable data is especially difficult to achieve in a company that sells through two or three tiered distribution Channels.
“A big part of my job is to identify products that existing customers aren’t buying from us,” explained Andy Pan, LSI Logic’s Director of Sales. “I then send an outside sales rep to make a presentation or design a promotional campaign around a certain segment of customers. To do this, I need accurate, up-to-date sales information.” Until recently, Pan’s team had to rely on hand built Excel spreadsheets that were time consuming and cumbersome to maintain. “We had another system that was supposed to help us with this,” said Pan, “ but it didn’t fit our business model, so we ended up having to cut and paste from several sources into Excel. Needless to say, this wasn’t a very effective solution.”
A Year of Searching For The Right Solution
About two years ago, LSI decided to evaluate a new product developed by their database vendor to address the challenge of gathering and processing POS data. After using it for a year, they gave up. “The product was just too complex,” said Pan. “It was more than we needed, so after a year of implementation and testing, we decided to abandon it and look for another solution.”
According to Pan, LSI evaluated four or five other vendors and ultimately chose CMR’s Channel POS and Channel Inventory products. “Most of the companies we considered were larger than CMR and their products were more costly. Overall, CMR offered the best features for the best price.”
Today, instead of manually extracting the data from various sources, LSI’s asks all of its distributors to send their POS data files in EDI format directly to CMR. POS data is normally sent every month, and inventory figures are sent weekly. Once CMR receives the data, it is ready for viewing at LSI in report format in a matter of hours.
Channel POS Reports Help Sales Team Target Customers
Collecting the data is just the first step in the process. Even accurate data isn’t helpful if it’s not presented in an intelligent fashion. Toward this end, Channel POS organizes and displays POS records into comprehensive Crystal Reports that show quarterly or monthly breakdowns by territory, reseller, product, distributor, and/or price.
“I can easily determine what a given customer is buying before I contact them and identify when and to whom to up sell. This enables me to have a topical conversation with the customer,” said Pan. “I can also use the data to target customers who aren’t ordering certain products from us and design a marketing campaign around them.”
Pan’s sales team also leverages Channel POS to better manage relationships. “It is an excellent organizer of information and central source of data on each Channel partner,” Pan observed. “We can even input free-hand data in the notes section of the program, so that everyone in the organization can view the history of a given customer.”
Pan also uses Channel POS to validate that outside sales reps are following up on his leads. “I can see customer activity at a glance, so I know exactly what kind of attention each one is being given, and I can step in if necessary to make sure we are making the most of each customer relationship.”
CMR’s Channel Inventory module helps LSI consolidate and organize inventory by partner and SKU. “We can now figure out each week, with a high degree of accuracy, what each partner has what on hand so that we can find the right partner for the right customer and get products moved,” Pan added.
“Channel POS is very simple to use. Just point and click.”
“Now everyone in the organization can view the entire history of any customer. It’s an excellent central source of data for each customer, right at our fingertips.”
“The Channel POS reports show very thorough breakdowns - by product, price, quarter, month and customer - so that we can see what a customer is buying before we contact them.”
Benefits To The Organization
- Accurate, up-to-date POS information enables the tracking of customer activity and sales trends
- Central place to gather information so that everyone can see a history of each account
- Channel POS reports help the sales team strategize about how to entice customers to purchase
- Channel Inventory itemizes inventory balances by account and improves movement of inventory
About Computer Market Research
For more than 23 years, CMR has delivered cost effective, technology-based applications and services to manufacturers to assist them in managing channel data, optimize their trade promotion investments and maximize the effectiveness of their distribution channels. CMR’s Web-based solutions accelerate and automate distributor and reseller data collection, processing, analysis and reporting. CMR’s newest clients include Buffalo Technology, D-Link, LSI Corporation, and Targus. More information is available from the CMR customer support line at
(858) 795-1021, or can be viewed at www.computermarketresearch.com.
