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C h a i n D r u g s t o r e D a i l y M o n d a y, A p r i l 1 8 , 2 0 1 6 8 CROSSMARK BUILDS MEANINGFUL CONNECTIONS FOR GROWTH An interview with David Newman, Chief Insights Officer, CROSSMARK. CDD: The dynamics of retailing today are constantly changing as technology advances at almost lightning speed. How is CROSSMARK helping retailers adapt to these changes from a category man- agement perspective? DN: Technology has enabled a level of transparency and speed that empowers us to have a dynamic conversation with our retail partners. CROSSMARK's advanced analytics system includes unmatched data sources, world-class ana- lytic talent, and state-of-the-art tools and technology. With new data blending and visualization tools, we now are able to bring together disparate data sources onto a single canvas and engage in busi- ness planning with a line of 'What-If' questioning along multiple vectors. This allows us to have this conversation in real time to solve for specific issues within the traditional 4Ps. CDD: CROSSMARK is known for tak- ing a 'Thought to Bought' approach to category management and shopper engagement. Explain what this concept means and how it helps retailers capture more sales category by category. DN: CROSSMARK's "Thought to Bought" concept means having a granu- lar approach to understanding how we connect consumer demand to shopper purchase. Our unmatched integration of sales and marketing capabilities maxi- mizes growth potential for clients by integrating efforts to more quickly iden- tify opportunities and early watch-outs, deliver ROI-driven plans, streamline development, and ensure clear coor- dination and linkage from insights to activation. Our ultimate goal is to help our clients create a strategic framework whereby their marketing and sales efforts seamlessly deliver results for retailers. To accomplish this, we do everything we can to get closer to the consumer and shopper through an occasion or need-state framework. CDD: How can the services you provide help retailers create a differentiated brand identity for their stores – an identity that makes their store the go-to place for today's busy shoppers? DN: Our innovative approach of understanding consumer and shopper needs, and having the ability to link those insights to the store-level, com- bined with our connectivity and influ- ence in the marketplace, helps clients grow market penetration, increase speed-to-market, improve on-shelf presence and availability, and connect with consumers and shoppers to drive conversion and brand loyalty. CDD: What is on the near horizon where category man- agement is concerned? Anything you'll be introduc- ing in 2016 that will take category management to the next level for super- market retailers? DN: This year we restructured CROSS- MARK to deliver on our "Smarter Way, Faster Growth" tagline. In doing so, we are able to link consumer and shopper needs through occasion-based research and insights, maximizing the traditional 4Ps and driving differentiation at store level. We can identify critical insights to understand and target the right shoppers with the right products, right channels, right locations, right pricing and right message at the right time. For more information, visit www .crossmark.com. THE DATA IS TRYING TO TELL YOU SOMETHING – HOW WELL ARE YOU LISTENING? By John Ross, President, Promotion Network, Inmar Effective listening has always been essential to successful marketing, and in today's marketplace, it's never been more true. Increasing audience fragmentation, pervasive channel promiscuity and accel- erating device penetration has created an environment in which trading partners must pay careful attention to everything consumers are telling them or risk losing their competitive position. Forever. This may not be news to some, but the newer lesson is that in order for data- gathering to truly inform strategies for growing share and building brand, it has to be comprehensive – including and extending well beyond what can be cap- tured in aisle or at checkout. Knowing what happens in store is crucial, but as so much shopper decision-making takes place pre-trip, trading partners must sig- nificantly expand their data capture and intensify their analysis of all acquired information. If they can do that, they will gain a more contextual understanding of shopper behavior, be more effective engaging shoppers and be more success- ful influencing their behavior during their next trip. To help clients extract actionable insights from the massive data sets avail- able and assist them in developing com- prehensive shopper-activation strategies, Inmar recently acquired Willard Bishop, a Chicago-based research and analytics firm with 40 years of experience in the consumer packaged goods and retail industries. With the addition of Willard Bishop, Inmar is bringing even deeper retailer and manufacturer domain expert- ise into our shared operations and expanding our collective solutions to include everything from promo- tions and planogram develop- ment to pricing assistance and profitability consulting. Willard Bishop may best be known for producing their annual SuperStudy™ reports. These reports, including SuperStudy Grocery, Total Store SuperStudy and SuperStudy eCommerce, deliver compre- hensive shopper analytics and merchan- dising data that together provide a greater understanding of the manufacturer-retail- er-consumer relationship and inform enterprise-level decision support and promotion optimization solutions. Employing proprietary analytics and cost modeling, Willard Bishop provides consulting services and custom-devel- oped applications to client companies to help them identify growth opportunities, increase productivity and improve over- all business performance. These addi- tional capabilities, matched with Inmar's existing products and services, position us to offer clients new solutions for improving their understanding across the extended value chain, particularly in the areas of shopper behavior, supply chain, demand planning and profitability analysis. Those brands and retailers using data to understand and seg- ment shoppers, and deliver a gen- uinely personalized shopper experi- ence, are distancing themselves from the competition and achieving real success even as the industry contin- ues to contract in the face of greater and greater pressures from any number of sources, and it's not because they're intrinsically better or smarter than their competitors. They have simply made the commit- ment to stop using data exclusively as a forensic tool for measuring past perform- ance, and are using it to identify growth opportunities and improve overall busi- ness performance. They're actively lis- tening to their shoppers – learning from, anticipating and acting on what shoppers are saying and how they're behaving. It's what successful marketers do, and what Inmar can help you do. Visit Inmar at booth #430. For more information, go to www.inmar.com, email solutions@inmar.com or call 866.440.6917. PHARMACIES FIND MARKETOUCH MEDIA'S CLINICAL SOLUTIONS DRIVING PROFITS Pharmacies face unprecedented chal- lenges, including lower profit-per-script from mushrooming generic use and lower margins from the proliferation of closed and limited networks. Pharmacies also recognize that providing higher lev- els of care for at-risk patients (interven- tions, specialty pharmacy, medication therapy management, disease state man- agement, etc.) allows them to adapt and thrive in this changing environment. But success in this arena requires efficient, yet high-touch patient communications. This is why more pharmacies are turning to MarkeTouch Media's suite of full- service clinical solutions. MarkeTouch Media's clinical serv- ice suite empowers clients to more effec- tively manage specific, disease-related patient populations. In addition to deliv- ering better clinical outcomes, MarkeTouch Media's clinical solutions reduce overall healthcare costs and max- imize ROI. For example, its outbound communication solutions have reduced returned-to-stock prescriptions by an average of 40 percent, increasing prof- itability by $600,000 for every million prescriptions filled. The suite also enables users to easily document the information required for prompt and complete payment. RxTouch SM Optimum MedSync is MarkeTouch Media's medication syn- chronization service, which allows patients with multiple medica- tions to move to a com- mon refill date, improv- ing patient adherence, compliance and persistency. Fully customizable, it allows pharmacists to have targeted, clinical conversations with their patients while easing the workflow burden on pharmacy staff. Optimum MedSync improves the quality metrics measured by health plans, resulting in additional access to patient lives. It also drives the pharmacy's bot- tom line, potentially increasing revenue by more than $1 million dollars in the first year. RxTouch Pharmacist Connect is a fully hosted solution that allows pharma- cy staff to efficiently make live, one-on- one patient calls. The service streamlines pharmacy operations and allows each patient to choose their preferred commu- nication channels for pharmacy interac- tion. By employing the patients' channel prefer- ences, the pharmacy can achieve greater adherence and persistency to the pre- scribed regimen. Each client has the abil- ity to select targeted campaigns that ensure patients make a positive impact on quality and operational metrics. MarkeTouch Media's Clinical Solutions provide guidance on which interventions to apply to specific patients to drive revenues from other sources in the health care environment, including med- ication therapy management providers, employer groups and other stakeholders. Its data analytics allows customizable, actions-based reporting that drills down to the patient and prescription level, showing the impact of interventions applied. For more information, visit www.marke touchmedia.com, email sales@marke touchmedia.com or call 800.840.8111.