Marketing expert description. Marketing Expert computer program. Basic principles of system operation

Package Marketing Expert intended for marketing analysis.

The Marketing Expert system was developed by Pro-Invest Consulting (Moscow) using well-known analytical methods adopted throughout the world (GAP analysis, Segment analysis, SWOT analysis, Portfolio analysis), and solves everyday practical marketing tasks. Marketing Expert is a consultant to the head of the enterprise, commercial director or the head of the sales service, which allows in practice to apply the basic principles and methods of marketing analysis and planning.

With the Marketing Expert package, you can perform the following tasks.

Market segmentation. Formation of the territorial and marketing structure of the company, by means of establishing a connection between goods, consumers, distribution channels.

Evaluation of product profitability, profitability and profitability of individual market segments.

Selection of optimal distribution channels and options for product sales.

Assessment of the company's competitiveness (SWOT - analysis).

Choosing a marketing goal and developing the most effective strategy for achieving it - reducing costs, releasing new products, developing new markets (GAP analysis).

Assessment of risks associated with the implementation of each of the strategies.

Development of a tactical marketing plan, formation of an optimal portfolio of goods and marketing mix events (Portfolio analysis).

The solution of the inverse problem - the calculation of price options for a group of goods for a given profit.

Calculation of demand elasticity coefficient and sales forecast.

Formation of the marketing part of the business plan in accordance with international standards.

Marketing Expert is a convenient tool for developing strategic and tactical marketing plans, allowing you to perform all the necessary analytical operations, as well as prepare and print Required documents. Marketing Expert, using a convenient graphical preprocessor, allows you to build a model of a company that has a complex sales structure, operates simultaneously in several markets, has certain competitors and conducts certain events for certain target groups of consumers. The constructed model of the company makes it possible to carry out a segment analysis of profitability through the calculation of income and costs for any market segment or structural element of the company. Marketing Expert allows you to conduct a multi-criteria marketing audit, which can involve both quantitative and qualitative criteria.

The program helps to set the goals of the enterprise and determine strategies for achieving them. Marketing Expert allows you to build matrix models designed to develop strategic recommendations on the range of products and the attractiveness of market segments. In addition, with the help of the program tools, it is possible to perform a multivariate analysis of risk and uncertainty - both due to the variation external factors(market size, market share), and due to local factors (marketing costs, variable production costs, sales revenue).

The program allows you to solve the inverse problem - to determine the necessary initial parameters for the given profit of the entire company. In particular, the problem of finding price options for covering total costs for a group of goods is being solved.

Marketing Expert can store a forecast and multiple plan options in the same project, allowing you to enter factual information as the plan progresses and compare actual data with planned figures. The program makes it possible to optimally distribute the marketing budget using multi-criteria optimization procedures.

Basic principles of system operation

A strategic marketing plan is the foundation of a corporate business plan. The basis of long-term corporate planning of an enterprise is a five- or three-year strategic marketing plan. It should define clear quantitative goals and develop strategies to achieve them. Marketing Expert provides decision support at all stages strategic planning marketing and helps prepare the necessary output forms and graphics.

Marketing Expert provides a solution to the problems of GAP analysis, SWOT analysis, multi-criteria Portfolio analysis, optimal distribution of the marketing budget and risk and uncertainty analysis, and also allows you to solve the inverse problem - calculate the necessary input parameters for a given margin.

The strategic marketing plan developed by Marketing Expert provides all the necessary data for production planning and financial planning, thus being the basis of the business planning process. A convenient graphics processor allows you to quickly create a model of a company with a complex infrastructure and operating in several markets at the same time. Tools information visualizations allow you to create a company database with a graphical user interface. With the help of a graphical preprocessor, a "Market Map" is created, which displays the infrastructure elements of the company, target consumer groups and competitors. Primary data and analysis results can be displayed on the Market Map using the legend editor.

Marketing Expert enables teamwork in the development of a corporate marketing plan, i.e. several departments can independently plan their actions while being in the same project. Each infrastructure department of the company can enter up-to-date data on the results of the implementation of its plan. In this case, the results of the execution of the general plan will be calculated automatically.

Solving problems of optimal pricing planning

Marketing Expert allows you to solve inverse problems for a given profit (profitability) of the entire company, to find price options for individual products. This procedure can be applied, in particular, to find price options for covering the company's total costs (variable and fixed) for a group of goods. In a more general setting, the problem of multi-criteria optimal price planning is solved, i.e. search task best options prices for a group of goods, based on the satisfaction of several criteria at once, both quantitative and qualitative (profit, profitability, demand, competitiveness, etc.)

"Marketing Expert" is a tool for developing a company's marketing strategy. The system helps to assess the real position of the company in the market, to comparative analysis with competitors, to form an optimal sales structure. The system calculates the yield and profitability of various market segments and products; the company's market share and its growth rate; prices for goods, based on a given level of profitability; efficiency of product distribution through marketing channels. The use of generally accepted analytical methods (GAP analysis, segment analysis, SWOT analysis, Portfolio analysis) provides invaluable assistance in developing the optimal strategy and tactics of the company on the market, in assessing risks and calculating the main planned financial results.

The central element of the program is the “market map”, which is designed by the user using a special graphical preprocessor. The market map schematically displays the company, its divisions, the territories in which it operates, products, consumer groups, competitors, etc. (see Appendix 3). All objects are linked in a certain way and described in detail (relevant information can be entered when the object is activated). Thus, Marketing Expert allows you to “work through” every essential element in the life of the company, keeping the big picture in front of your eyes. In addition to quantitative methods, Marketing Expert contains tools qualitative analysis(expert sheets and editing tools) .

The program allows you to view the results in a tabular or graphical form, print them directly or export the data for further editing in Microsoft Word.

However, the program has a number of disadvantages that significantly reduce its value:

The interface is extremely unprofessional, as a result, it is inconvenient to work with the model and the "game" component of the work disappears, lost momentum. In some cases, working with the program completely obscures the work with the model from the user. This limits the applicability of the tool to those projects in which it is too difficult to assess their prospects without building a complex marketing model.

The program works with large amounts of data, but does not offer good tools for collecting and preparing them for input, so creating an acceptable model is an expensive and not always feasible operation.

For the above reasons, a flexible and high-quality tool did not work out of the program. But it still looks quite acceptable as not the most convenient, but the most professional system.

This program was chosen because it is the most developed in terms of functional completeness and the only one that includes really powerful analytical tools. The main idea behind the program is to build a virtual model of the market and the company operating on it. The model includes both geographical distribution and market segmentation by consumer categories and competitor behavior patterns, and much more. The principle of working with the program is sometimes even closer not to the usual work of an analyst, but to business game, because it is impossible to capture the whole picture of the model in the mind and its behavior is already monitored by the program itself. Getting to know the Marketing Expert program is The best way understand many principles of marketing analysis, evaluate their complexity and applicability for each specific case.

The Marketing Expert package is designed for marketing analysis and has the appropriate tools (see Figure 14).

Figure 14 Marketing Expert window

The solution of marketing audit tasks in the Marketing Expert program is based on relational databases.

Strategic marketing planning begins with an audit. The marketing audit, in turn, begins with the creation of a Market Map using the tools of the program, which contains the structural elements of the company (departments, distribution channels), external market segments (territories, product groups, target groups of consumers, competitors) and marketing activities from marketing mix defined for specific segments. By entering the Market Map, the user thereby segments the market and determines the main target groups of consumers, that is, takes the first step in the marketing audit.

Market Map objects are interconnected by links that create a strict tree-like structure of a company model operating in several markets, having an extensive sales network and conducting certain activities for specific segments. For each node (object) of the tree, you can enter information about sales of certain goods at certain prices and with certain discounts, as well as set the structure and enter information about marketing costs (operational and trade-administrative) for this particular object. This makes it possible to conduct an operational financial calculation (sales income - costs) for any object of the Market Map, that is, to conduct the so-called segment profitability analysis, which is one of the main elements of a marketing audit. In this case, the results of the calculation at individual nodes of the tree are collected and summarized up the tree to the top, which is the company itself.

It is very important that the program tools allow you to quickly rebuild the structure of the Market Map objects (introduce new segments for analysis, transfer information from old ones, etc.). This allows you to analyze various options for segmenting the market, the sales structure of the company or events from the marketing mix (Fig. 15).

After performing a segment analysis of profitability, the user receives income and profit values ​​for any market segment, structural unit of the company, or can evaluate the effectiveness of specific activities from the marketing mix. As a result, the user gets the opportunity to compare segments according to these criteria. Marketing Expert, using special dialogs, allows the user to conduct a multi-criteria comparative analysis of Market Map objects on 20 topics, which automatically include data on income and profit. Other criteria may be expert assessments and are integral, that is, each criterion consists, in turn, of an unlimited number of subcriteria included in a linear convolution with certain weights. As a result of such a multi-criteria comparative analysis, there is an optimal distribution of resources (budget) between market segments or structural divisions companies.

Figure 15 Market map with marketing mix objects

A special type of expert benchmarking is the so-called SWOT analysis, in which an expert evaluates his company and its closest competitors on key success factors that determine advantages from the buyer's point of view. Marketing Expert contains a special dialog for conducting a SWOT analysis and printing its results.

Figure 16 GEM model example

An important element of the marketing audit is the analysis of the company's product portfolio and market segments using matrix models of Portfolio analysis. The results of the SWOT analysis, together with an expert assessment of the Market Segment Attractiveness criterion, make it possible to build a GEM matrix model (Fig. 16) designed to assess competitiveness (business strength) and attractiveness in specific market segments. Also, based on the calculated growth rates of specific market segments and relative market share, the program allows you to build a BCG matrix model, designed primarily to evaluate the company's product portfolio. Marketing Expert contains a special window for displaying these matrices, setting their parameters and printing. Thus, Marketing Expert contains the necessary tools for conducting standard marketing audit procedures and some specific tools (for example, the procedure for multi-criteria comparative analysis of segments) that are not described in special literature and are the author's inventions of the program creators.

The strategic marketing plan should contain certain standard forms (GAP analysis, SWOT analysis, multi-criteria Portfolio analysis, segment analysis). The Marketing Expert toolkit helps the user to obtain and print all standard forms, and provides them with additional features planning analysis.

The solution of the problems of GAP-analysis (gap analysis) is provided by storing in one project several variants of the marketing plan, which are the implementation of the forecast, and four Anzoff strategies. In a special dialog "GAP-analysis" the user has the opportunity to select a plan option for which the initial data on sales and costs will be entered. After that, when opening data entry dialogs for any "Market Maps" object, the title of the dialog panel displays the name of the selected strategy. When choosing the next Anzoff strategy, it is possible to load data from the previous strategy. The user only needs to add the necessary activities specific to this strategy, the costs of these activities and the projected income and compare its results with previous strategies and with the company's goal, which is also entered in the "GAP analysis" dialog.

The "GAP analysis" dialog also allows you to collect information from all segments on the planned total quantity of all goods, by planning periods, if necessary with the corresponding prices and discounts. Such information is necessary primarily for the development of an appropriate production plan. The "GAP-analysis" dialog has the necessary graphic and printing tools that allow you to visualize the results of the analysis and get their hard copies.

When you click the "Financial calculation" button, an operational calculation of profitability (sales income, costs) is carried out for the selected object of the Market Map. Thus, it is possible to calculate the profitability for audit and planning periods of any structural subdivision of the company, market segment (territory, target group of consumers or product group) or Marketing mix event. When the "Company" object is selected on the Map, performing a financial calculation means calculating the results of the corresponding strategy selected in the "GAP-analysis" panel.

SWOT analysis is carried out both at the audit stage and at the end planning period. Marketing Expert contains a special dialog that allows the user to conduct a comparative competitive analysis for any market segment in the initial and final planning periods. To do this, you first need to "hook" objects of the "competitor" type to this segment using links and set the key success factors for this market segment, and then put down the appropriate ratings for your company and competitors on a ten-point scale. As a result, the user will receive the relative "business strength" of his company in this segment. In the same dialog, you can set the total percentage for all participants in the analysis and, as a result, get an expert assessment of your market share. Note that this procedure is not included in the standard SWOT analysis and is additional tool analysis. The user can get a visual graphical interpretation of comparative competitiveness.

Portfolio analysis matrix models (BCG, GEM) are not only audit tools, but also visual and convenient tools for issuing strategic recommendations on product ranges or market segments, depending on their location in matrix models. The Boston Matrix Model not only provides recommendations general view for a product depending on its location in the matrix (question marks, stars, money cows, dogs), which are actually recommendations for different phases life cycle product, but also gives specific advice on the complex marketing mix (product, price, sales, promotion). A special integral criterion in the multi-criteria comparative analysis performed for market segments is "Market attractiveness". The expert assessment of this criterion, combined with the "business strength" in this segment, obtained as a result of the SWOT analysis, allows you to build a GEC matrix model that gives recommendations on investment, selective management or withdrawal of funds for market segments.

Marketing Expert enables the user to take into account the probabilistic nature of future events and thereby analyze risk and uncertainty. The program allows you to set both the probabilistic nature of microenvironment factors - sales revenues, operating and production costs (dialog "Risk Analysis"), and macroenvironment factors - market volume, market share (dialog "Uncertainty Analysis").

The "Risk Analysis" dialog is also used to solve inverse problems based on given results (income, profit, profitability), to determine the value of the initial parameters. In particular, the problem of finding cost-coverage prices for a group of goods is solved. However, a company's cost recovery prices are only one of the criteria that can be applied to find optimal prices.

Marketing Expert has a built-in forecasting system that allows you to forecast (extrapolate) sales using one of the following methods:

Copying for a period - extrapolation of a given period to the next ones with a certain growth step (it can be both positive and negative).

Exponential smoothing.

Model selection - one of eight is selected mathematical models for least squares smoothing and trend prediction.

Seasonality - A simple seasonality model is used by calculating seasonal coefficients.

Multiple regression.

Conclusions on the second chapter

Summing up the results of the study of software and network resources, we conclude that they are not competitors. Most likely these are additions, and if there are still problems between the choice software. That network resources are simply indispensable for a modern organization.

The software will allow you to analyze, according to the data received, classify, describe everything in detail and segment the markets. Network Products provide an excellent opportunity for a relatively low cost to get access to a colossal audience, inform them about the news of the organization and much more. The application contains statistics on the development of brands of companies and the most leading role in it is occupied by Google, the founder of Internet marketing. Now we think that the Internet has always been, and with it were Google, Yandex, forgetting that the first one huddled in a cramped hostel, and the second made money selling computers, not assuming that it would soon become the basis of its prosperity in Russian market.

The Marketing Expert program, created by Pro-Invest-IT, implements a decision support system for strategic and tactical marketing planning.

The creators of the program assume that the basis of long-term corporate planning of an enterprise is a five- or three-year strategic marketing plan. In accordance with the adopted concept, it should define clear quantitative goals and develop strategies to achieve them. The program makes it possible to perform all the necessary analytical operations, as well as to prepare the appropriate output forms and graphs.

The Marketing Expert program allows you to:

solve the problems of market segmentation, identify the strengths and weaknesses of the company and its competitors and predict the company's development strategy;

form the optimal structure of the company's product portfolio;

solve the problems of management accounting (for example, what part of the total cost is contributed by a particular unit);

solve pricing problems (how much you can lower prices, while covering all costs in order to increase sales, or how much you can raise prices, but so that the market accepts them);

draw up several marketing plans for several strategies at the same time;

draw up a complete strategic marketing plan;

prepare data for drawing up a corporate business plan. The process of building a marketing plan is carried out in successive steps.

First step- Formulating the mission of the company. It should be defined in terms of the basic need of the potential client. The formulated mission of the company is entered into the program report generator. Having defined its mission, the company thereby defines its target market, on which she is going to compete.

Second step- market segmentation. Its results are displayed in the program on the so-called market map. The initial information for the market map is imported from the Marketing Analytic program, also created by Pro-Invest-IT, or entered manually. The map contains structural elements of the company (departments, distribution channels), external market segments (territories, product groups, target consumer groups, competitors) and marketing activities defined for specific segments. Market map objects are interconnected by links that create a tree structure. At the same time, a model of a company with a complex infrastructure is formed. The Marketing Expert program allows you to model enterprises of any scale, any industry, with any infrastructure.

By forming a market map, the user of the program thereby segments the market and determines the main target groups of consumers, i.e. lays the foundation for a marketing audit.

Marketing costs are set for each map object. In accordance with the concept of the authors of the program, marketing costs are any company costs that are not directly related to the production technology. With this approach, marketing costs include almost all types of administrative and overhead costs.

The module for setting marketing costs is one of the most powerful modules of the program that allows you to solve management accounting problems. Marketing costs can be given by the total amount, the list of articles, per unit of product and per operational unit. In addition, it is possible to fully describe the entire complex of 4 Rs for this segment. The database allows you to enter information on an almost unlimited number of goods. According to the developers of the program, the use of such a flexible scheme for entering data makes it possible to describe as much as possible operating enterprise and at the same time plan its activities for the future.

Third step- marketing audit. A ready-made market map with operational data entered allows you to proceed directly to the marketing audit, which is represented by three main components: segment profitability analysis, competitiveness analysis (SWOT-analysis), multi-criteria comparative analysis.

Segment profitability analysis. The built model of the company makes it possible to carry it out. For any market segment or structural element of the company, an operational financial calculation is made (sales income minus costs). The result of the segment financial calculation is the table of the operational "Profit and Loss Statement". The program allows you to present the rows of the table in graphical form, and you can set the method for plotting the graph: for all periods or only for reporting ones. The segment profitability analysis results can be exported to the widely used Microsoft Word program.

Thus, the profitability of any market segment (territory, target group of consumers or product group) can be calculated. Segment profitability analysis and its evaluation gives the marketer the necessary information to decide which products to remove, which to support, which customers to target. Special attention. In addition, the problem of determining the contribution of specific segments to the coverage of the company's total costs can be solved. In this case, the results of the calculation at individual nodes of the tree are collected and summarized up the tree to the top, which is the company itself.

SWOT analysis. The English abbreviation SWOT is derived from four words: strength - strength, weakness - weakness, opportunity - opportunity, threat - threat. For a full-scale marketing audit, it is necessary to analyze the company's position in specific market segments in comparison with its main competitors. For this, a SWOT analysis is used, which systematizes the audit data in the form of an assessment of the main strengths and weaknesses firms.

The expert evaluates his company and closest competitors on key success factors that determine the advantages of a particular company from the point of view of the buyer. Competitiveness analysis calculates business strength and relative business strength (the ratio of the company's business strength to the business strength of the strongest competitor), market shares, and relative market shares.

Multicriteria comparative analysis. The program allows you to conduct it for market map objects on 20 topics. They automatically include income and profit data. The remaining criteria may be in the nature of expert assessments and are integral, i.e. each criterion consists, in turn, of an unlimited number of subcriteria included in a linear convolution with certain weights. As a result of such a multi-criteria comparative analysis, an optimal distribution of resources (budget) between market segments or structural divisions of the company occurs.

Thus, the application of the above methods will allow a full-scale audit of marketing.

Fourth step- Portfolio analysis. It serves as a tool for developing strategic recommendations. Its main purpose is to help in the rational distribution of limited resources between the various markets of the product in which it is presented.

The program provides the construction of the two most popular matrix models:

model of the Boston Consulting Group Boston Consulting Group (BCG) - classification of goods by market share where the criteria are market growth rates and relative market share;

the General Electric / McKinsey (DEMK) model - classification of goods according to investment zones, selective management and potential depletion zone; it is based on criteria such as business strength and market attractiveness.

The diameter of the circle in the matrix model will approximately reflect the volume of sales of a particular product, which allows analysis not only between matrix groups, but also within the group itself. Depending on where the situation is in the matrix, strategic recommendations are issued on the product range or market segments for all marketing components (product, price, sales, promotion, including advertising, personal selling, promotion, public relations).

The analysis carried out allows us to draw conclusions about a possible strategy for a group of goods, about the assessment of financial needs and the potential for profitability, about the distribution of sales by quadrants.

Fifth step- GAP-analysis (literally translated from of English language- "gap analysis") and Anzoff's strategy. The recommendations received as a result of the Portfolio analysis require further specification in the form of setting goals and developing strategies for achieving them, based on the real situation on the markets. This is done by Gap-analysis, which is the core of strategic planning. The solution of the problems of GAP analysis is provided by storing in one project several variants of the marketing plan, which are the implementation of the forecast, and four Anzoff strategies.

The user can enter the financial equivalent of the intended goal, select a plan option for which initial data on sales and costs will be entered, and compare indicators for various strategies. The program has the necessary graphical printing tools that allow you to visualize the results of the analysis.

The Marketing Expert program allows the user to take into account the probabilistic nature of future events and thereby analyze risk and uncertainty, taking into account changes in both external factors (market size, market share) and local ones (marketing costs, variable production costs, sales revenues).

The program also has the ability to solve the inverse problem - determining the values ​​of the initial parameters (costs, prices) according to the given results (income, profit, profitability).

The presence of a built-in forecasting system allows the user to forecast operational data using the following methods:

exponential smoothing (weighted moving average);

model selection (least squares method);

seasonal fluctuations (weight coefficients and forecast taking into account them);

demand function (based on price determination of sales volume);

multivariate regression.

The program allows you to view all the results in a tabular or graphical form, print them directly or export the data for further editing in Microsoft Word.

Thus, the Marketing Expert program, according to the developers, is capable of:

segment the market, forming the territorial and sales structure of the company, establishing links between goods, consumers, distribution channels;

evaluate the profitability of products, the profitability and profitability of individual market segments;

choose the best distribution channels and options for selling products;

evaluate competitiveness based on SWOT analysis; choose a goal and develop the most effective strategy for achieving it;

assess the risk associated with the implementation of each of the strategies;

develop a tactical marketing plan, form an optimal portfolio of goods and events Marketing Mix (Portfolio analysis);

solve the inverse problem of calculating price options for a group of goods for a given profit;

calculate the coefficient of elasticity of demand and build a sales forecast;

form the marketing part of the business plan in accordance with international financial reporting standards and transfer it as initial information to the Project Expert system, also created by Pro-Invest-IT.

When developing the Marketing Expert program, its connection with other software products Pro-Invest-IT company.

For example, the Project Expert exchange module imports product, sales terms, and other data prepared in the Marketing Expert system into the operating plan of the current Project Expert project. In other words, the Marketing Expert program, acting as standalone system, can at the same time serve as an addition to the Project Expert program as a means of detailed study of the marketing plan for investment projects.

As initial data for analysis and development of a marketing plan in the Marketing Expert program, data from the geographic information system (GIS) Marketing GEO can be used, which is based on Goskomstat data and allows you to enter your own data to calculate the market capacity, company share and closest competitors, as well as form optimal sales structure. The main features provided to the user by the Marketing-Expert program are reflected in Appendix 4.

The computer on which Marketing Expert is installed can meet extremely low system requirements: processor 486DX66 or higher, at least 8MB random access memory, free hard disk space from 15 MB.

Marketing Expert runs on Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT and above. It is a completely independent program that does not require the launch of auxiliary applications for its operation, which ensures high reliability and speed of its operation. Practical experience of working with the program shows that experts highly appreciate the implementation of GAP analysis in it and strategic analysis Anzoff, a little lower - the implementation of SWOT analysis, significantly lower - the implementation of Portfolio analysis and segment analysis. According to many experts, this program is one of the most developed in terms of functional completeness and the only one that includes really powerful analytical tools.

The main idea behind the program is to build a virtual model of the market and the company operating on it. The principle of working with the program is closer not to the usual work of an analyst, but to a business game, since it is impossible to cover the whole picture of the model and its behavior is already monitored by the program itself. The operation of the program revealed a number of its shortcomings. It works with large amounts of data, but does not offer effective tools for collecting and preparing them for input, so creating an acceptable model is a laborious operation. The interface of the program is not entirely successful, as a result, it is inconvenient to work with the model, the feeling of dynamics is lost. In some cases, working with the program completely obscures the work with the model from the user. This often leads to the fact that they try to use the program only for projects in which it is rather difficult to assess the situation without building a complex marketing model.

A very reputable marketing specialist, using the documentation supplied with the program, spent 84 hours on its development. Most of the time was spent on studying the logic of the package and the interface. In his opinion, mastering the principles of managing this package is an extremely time-consuming and lengthy task.

It should be remembered that the developer is constantly improving his product, and the above list of shortcomings will allow you to clarify with the seller the critical points you are interested in before making a purchase. Often, experts recommend getting to know the Marketing Expert program even if you are not going to buy and use it. In their opinion, this is the best way to understand the many principles of marketing analysis, evaluate their complexity and applicability for each specific case.

Program for developing a company's marketing strategy
Developer: Pro-Invest IT

03/13/2003. Pro-Invest IT has stopped developing and distributing the Marketing Expert program. On the this moment there is no such product on the market.

Official presentation of the product by the developer

The system helps to assess the real position of the company in the market, conduct a comparative analysis of its sales activities with competitors, and form an optimal sales structure. The system allows you to determine the profitability of various market segments and products, the company's market share and its growth rate. You can set the required level of profitability, and Marketing Expert will calculate the cost of goods needed to achieve it.

The use of generally accepted analytical methods (GAP-analysis, segment analysis, SWOT-analysis, Portfolio-analysis) provides invaluable assistance in developing the optimal strategy and tactics for the company's operation in the market, assessing risks and calculating the main planned financial results. A strategic marketing plan developed with Marketing Expert can be used to forecast sales volumes in Project Expert.

Our review

This program is undoubtedly one of the most developed in terms of functional completeness and the only one that includes a really powerful analytical toolkit. The main idea behind the program is to build a virtual model of the market and the company operating on it. The model includes both geographical distribution and market segmentation by consumer categories and competitor behavior patterns, and much more. The principle of working with the program is sometimes even closer not to the usual work of an analyst, but to a business game, because. it is impossible to capture the whole picture of the model in the mind and its behavior is already monitored by the program itself. This idea, if implemented with integrity and quality, could lead to a great product. However, the program has a number of disadvantages that significantly reduce its value:

1. The interface is extremely unprofessional, as a result, working with the model is inconvenient and the "game" component of the work disappears, i.e. lost momentum. In some cases, working with the program completely obscures the work with the model from the user. This limits the applicability of the tool to those projects in which it is too difficult to assess their prospects without building a complex marketing model.

2. The program works with large amounts of data, but does not offer good tools for collecting and preparing them for input, so creating an acceptable model is an expensive and not always feasible operation.

For the above reasons, a flexible and high-quality tool did not work out of the program. But it still looks quite acceptable as not the most convenient, but the most professional system. You can recommend getting to know Marketing Expert even if you are not going to buy and use it - this is the best way to understand many of the principles of marketing analysis, evaluate their complexity and applicability for each specific case.