For more than 60 years, Kantar Worldpanel has been a recognized global expert in shopper behavior. Through continuous monitoring, advanced analytics and tailored solutions, Kantar Worldpanel inspires successful decisions by brand owners, retailers, market analysts and government organizations.
Kantar Worldpanel is part of the Kantar Group, one of the world’s largest insight, information and consultancy networks. The Kantar Group is the data investment management division of WPP, a British multinational advertising and public relations company.
THE CHALLENGE
Kantar’s platform manages over 4 million panel members all over the world, with each panel member providing data to the platform on their purchase of food and other goods. The platform collects, manages, stores and processes consumer data before being analyzed by Kantar’s client teams. From validation of panelist details, regular communication with panelists and application of incentives to asset management and compliance monitoring, complexity across different countries is a constant challenge for Kantar’s client teams.
Kantar Worldpanel needed a better way to gain consistency in the process. Additionally, the challenge of maintaining multiple, disparate Panel Management solutions across Kantar’s global offices was compounded by the fact that business rules were embedded in application code, requiring development resources to make changes to the logic.
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Kantar’s vision for its platform was to allow its business users, rather than its IT teams, to own and manage the decisions that drive the business. To achieve this, business users needed the ability to modify and test decision logic in real-time and execute both as part of the user interface or batch processes. A key step was to centralize data and modernize several disparate legacy systems.
Additionally, Kantar needed a single repository for its decision logic that allowed business users across the globe to view the latest updates. Lastly, Kantar needed a solution that could easily integrate into its platform and with the technologies leveraged by its businesses around the world.
SOLUTION
After considering multiple solutions, Kantar selected InRule’s Decision Platform. With many goals and tasks to accomplish, the team decided to use InRule in four main ways: data validation, nightly batch runs, compliance, and workflow.
Kantar wanted to ensure that all its data was accurate and useful. Using InRule for data validation, Kantar has built decision logic to validate each data point for shopper profiles.
InRule provides nightly batch runs to calculate shopper demographics. These calculations help determine a range of factors such as shopper incentives, number of household members, addresses, shopper age ranges, BMI for family members, and more.
Kantar also uses InRule for compliance with company data standards and policies, where logic drives panelist behavior to ensure that data is shared on time and is accurate and relevant. Kantar utilizes InRule to send panelist members notifications via automated text, email and phone calls. They also use InRule to schedule in-person meetings and close panelists’ accounts.
Lastly, Kantar uses InRule as a workflow tool. For example, if panelists do not provide accurate or complete data, business rules send notifications back to the individuals and have them revise the information.
Kantar’s use of InRule with its platform provides valuable panelist information that is analyzed by the Kantar teams, turned into market intelligence and shared with its clients. The clients leverage this intelligence to increase revenue by understanding buying habits, recognizing consumer behavior trends, and measuring promotional campaigns’ effectiveness.
RESULTS
Kantar invested in InRule at the beginning of 2014 to bring consistency to their operations. Since then, the organization has expanded its use of InRule to 31 countries, including the UK, France, Spain, Portugal, Mexico, Thailand, Taiwan, Malaysia, Vietnam, Philippines, South Korea, China, UAE, and Saudi Arabia, with the latest addition being China. Kantar offices in South America and Africa also leverage the platform that is powered by InRule.
Kantar also migrated from its original on-premises to a cloud solution. Taking advantage of everything that cloud software brings to the table.
As the use of InRule expanded across Kantar’s offices worldwide, it became apparent that providing teams with the ability to copy and share decision logic between countries and across teams brought new levels of consistency and collaboration.
Kantar also cited several other benefits since implementing InRule, including time savings and transparency. “Decision logic examining the number of purchases by a panel member could take six weeks to change before,” says Michael Wood, Global Development Director. “Now we can make changes within a day.”
“Logic visibility was critical for us,” says Wood. “Once our business users could see what the logic was actually doing, the whole pace of change radically improved.”
“We wanted to put the power in the hands of the business,” says Wood. “With consistent processes, decision sharing and quick start-up, we’re well on the way.”
“Decision logic examining the number of purchases by a panel member could take six weeks to change before, now we can make changes within a day.”
Michael Wood,
Global Development Director
Kantar Worldpanel
FUTURE PLANS FOR INRULE
Kantar continues to expand and plans to launch in three more countries; Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria. InRule will be part of all of Kantar Worldpanel’s estate once it’s live and running in these countries.
Furthermore, integrations continue to play a considerable role in Kantar Worldpanel’s day-to-day work and in collecting data from panelists. Therefore, it is always scouting for new and more innovative solutions to manage its integrations with InRule to enhance the solution further.
Kantar Worldpanel continues to look for more use cases where they can benefit from using InRule.
“We’re always looking at situations and projects where we can benefit from implementing InRule, and we’ll continue to do so. Machine Learning is a new and interesting functionality that we’re exploring.”
Michael Wood,
Global Development Director
Kantar Worldpanel
