Company: BDS Marketing, Inc., Irvine, CA
Company Description: BDSmktg is the marketing agency that delivers sales. Our high-performance teams generate sell-through and our client service specialists offer expertise to enhance your marketing strategy. BDS offers Marketing Analytics, Training & Learning Incentives, Market Development, Performance Selling, Brand Advocacy and Merchandising services.
Nomination Category: Support Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Support Department of the Year

Nomination Title: More than Just Numbers: How BDSmktg’s Business Intelligence Department Raised the Bar for Reporting and Analytics

Tell the story about what this nominated department achieved since January 1 2013 (up to 525 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

In the ever-changing retail environment, it is important for brands to keep a pulse on their products at retail. In 2009, BDSmktg saw a need to provide clients with even more timely, relevant, and actionable insights from the retail floor, establishing a small, groundbreaking intelligence team to solve for this need. Since then, the team has grown by 300% and evolved into a key support department for BDS, called Business Intelligence. The department has become a significant asset for client accounts, providing guidance on how to build out reporting, develop ROI methods, and analyze store-level data, in addition to developing proprietary services and processes, including Dimensional Deployment, Mystery Shopping, and Retail Performance Index.

In 2013, the Business Intelligence department once again saw a need to revolutionize its processes and services to better serve the agency’s clients. Led by Randy Schrock, SVP of Strategic Services, the department launched several initiatives that ultimately improved the department’s quality of insights and operational efficiency. These included:

•All-in-One Dashboard Implementation: The department implemented a new reporting visualization software, which works with BDS’ proprietary performance management system, Insight:Center™, to show how a program is tracking against KPIs, visit compliance, and team performance. This system provides the reporting customization that clients desire, while delivering real-time information from the field.

•Account Reporting Centralization: The department previously used a decentralized reporting model, where all account teams were responsible for their own reporting and analysis. However, this created inconsistency and inefficiency. To solve the situation, the team established a central reporting hub for the entire agency to streamline account reporting, share best practices, and achieve operational efficiency.

•ROI Methodology Development: The department launched a complete process for designing and calculating program ROI. Previously, calculating ROI was situational with no consistency. The new process provides a starting point for setting up any control-based ROI models so that the team consistently monitors and approaches ROI every time.

•Dimensional Deployment Process Formalization: Dimensional Deployment has been a key ingredient to how BDS approaches our clients’ business since 2010. However, few knew the methodology behind it. To expand the pool of Dimensional Deployment subject matter experts and relieve the strain on internal resources, the department formalized best practices and trained new experts on how to properly perform Dimensional Deployment analysis, increasing trained experts by 800%.

These initiatives resulted in:

•Account Performance Improvement: With the efficiencies created by centralizing reporting and using the new dashboard software, account teams save 40 hours of work each week. This time is reinvested back in the account in other capacities, allowing field managers to focus on their team’s performance and improve visit compliance by 60%.

•Increased Operational Efficiency: The implementation of the new dashboard software automated the process of pulling and packaging data with very little human involvement week-to-week, which allowed the analytical team to re-focus 25% of their time on the interpretation of the data and recommendation of tactics for account teams.

•Higher Quality Insights: By centralizing account reporting, implementing new dashboard software, and launching a consistent ROI methodology, account teams can garner more accurate and real-time insights from the field, in addition to stronger analysis, data interpretation, and recommendations from Business Intelligence.

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Provide a brief (up to 125 words) biography about the leader(s) of the nominated organization/department:

As Senior Vice President of Strategic Services, Randy Schrock thrives on developing multi-faceted operational strategies that align with client goals and are actualized on the retail floor. In his role, Randy leads the BDS Business Intelligence team, which provides strategic analytics and research services to impact client success at virtually every stage of the sales process. With 17 years at BDS, Randy has held various positions in Client Service and Operations, and his drive has continuously delivered results for the agency. Prior to BDS, Randy’s experience includes positions as Senior Research Analyst at Frost and Sullivan and a consultant with Datapro.

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