Marketing expert description. Programs Marketing Expert, GEO, Analytic. Building a "Market Map"

The Marketing Expert package is designed to carry out 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 Program Expert, 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. Results of segment profitability analysis can be exported to a widely used program Microsoft Word.

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. Other criteria may be 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 this multicriteria comparative analysis there is an optimal distribution of resources (budget) between market segments or structural divisions companies.

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 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 The best way understand many principles of marketing analysis, evaluate their complexity and applicability for each specific case.

Marketing Expert is a decision support system at all stages of the development of strategic and tactical marketing plans and control over their implementation.

Main functions

The Marketing Expert program is designed to solve two main tasks:

1. Conducting a marketing audit: assessing the real position of the company in the market, comparing with competitors, identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the sales structure, pricing policy.

2. Marketing planning: development of the optimal strategy and tactics of the company in the market using well-known analytical techniques (GAP analysis, segment analysis, SWOT analysis, Portfolio analysis, etc.). In the process of implementing these tasks, the user gets the opportunity to solve the following particular tasks:

Assess the profitability of products for individual products and product groups, as well as the profitability and profitability of individual market segments;

Optimal distribution of products across distribution channels.

Working with the program

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. 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 a 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).

results

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.

The menu of the Marketing Expert program includes the following items:

File

“New/Open project” – this command creates a new or opens an old project file with *.me extension. A project consists of several files stored in a database. These files correspond to different strategies calculated in Gap analysis, SWOT analysis and Portfolio analysis results.

"Close project" - this command closes the current project. “Open file” – this command opens separate windows with matrix models (extension *.mat) or results of multicriteria analysis (extension *.mka). "Save file" - the data of the current window is saved.

The program has three types of windows. The first is the main window with the Market Map. Each project can contain only one such window. The second type of windows are windows with matrix models. They are stored in files with *.mat extension. Several such windows can be opened. The third type of windows are windows with the results of multicriteria analysis. They are stored in files with *.mka extension.

"Report Options" - this command opens a dialog box with which you can set the parameters of the output tables.

"Exit" - exit from the program.

Model

“Show model” – this command opens the main window of the program with the Market Map. Repeating the command closes the Map window. Show Tools – this command brings up three toolbars that allow you to edit the Market Map. Repeating the command closes the toolbars.

"Horizon" - by this command, the panel "Setting time intervals" appears, designed to set the periods of the report and planning. It is recommended to set the periods at the beginning of the work on the project.

"Scale" - this command allows you to select one of eight scales for displaying the Market Map.

Audit

"Marketing effectiveness" - this command appears a number of panels that allow using a number of questions to pre-evaluate the effectiveness of marketing in the enterprise. The survey is of an auxiliary nature and is not functionally connected with other parts of the program.

"Select topics" - this command appears a panel in which you can select criteria for multi-criteria analysis or for building matrix models, created by developers based on the works of Philip Kotler. By selecting the name of the topic "Philosophy of the customer", the user activates the corresponding panel (Fig. 131).

Selecting the topic "Marketing Organization" will open the panel shown in fig. 132, "Marketing Information" - in fig. 133, "Strategic Perspective" - ​​in fig. 134, " Operational efficiency» - in fig. 135.

"Comparative analysis" - this command opens a dialog panel, with the help of which the procedure for multi-criteria analysis is carried out, the results of segment analysis are loaded and matrix models of portfolio analysis are built.

“Order table” – this command performs independent ranking of comparative analysis objects according to all criteria in *.mka windows.

Criteria restrictions – this command sets criteria restrictions for all criteria in *.mka windows.

"Decision table" - this command is used for multi-criteria selection of objects in a comparative analysis.

Analysis

"Risk Analysis" - this command brings up the risk analysis panel.

An assessment of the potential of an enterprise can be carried out using a SWOT analysis, which should cover all areas of activity (management, production, marketing, finance, research and development).

By command "SWOT-analysis" the corresponding panel appears. By clicking on the “View Operational Data” command, a panel appears, with which you can conveniently view and print operational data for any object of the Market Map.

“Operational calculation” – this command is used to perform an operational calculation for the selected segment of the Market Map. "Gap-analysis" on this command, the Gap-analysis panel appears, with which you can select a strategy and compare their results.

The main tasks solved by Marketing Expert 2 Building a model of the company's activity in the market Determining the profitability and profitability of segments Analysis external environment- attractiveness of the market and the level of competition Analysis of the product portfolio SWOT-analysis Forecast of sales volumes of the company Choice of strategy Tactical marketing plan Monitoring the implementation of the strategy PRO-INVEST INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES

The model of the company's activities in the market is created automatically after specifying measurements - future slices of the model. The model consists of four multidimensional cubes that contain information about sales volumes in value and volume terms, prices, variable direct costs, promotion and distribution costs, as well as the profit calculated based on these data. Each of the components of the multidimensional cube model is a summary chronological table associated with others and having both general and individual dimensions. Marketing Expert 2 allows you to create an unlimited number of models and use both matching and non-repeating segmentation features (maps) as their measurements.

Entering data into the model market activity is conducted through special utilities and import scripts. So, with the help of a similar utility, data from the Sales Expert CRM system is imported automatically. Marketing Expert 2 also provides manual and clipboard data entry.

To analyze the external environment, identify promising markets, determine the level of competition and consumer preferences, Marketing Expert 2 uses templates of analytical methods presented in the form of user tables ... ... and data from expert surveys conducted both within the company and through the site.

To assess competition, you can use the construction of a map of strategic groups. The table built for this technique serves as an example of the implementation of such additional analytics. A little further on, we will consider how this additional analytical table will allow us to implement our own additional strategic group map matrix.

The methodology built into Marketing Expert 2 provides a SWOT analysis. A list of strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats compiled by experts... Based on the ranked list of indicators, an initial matrix is ​​formed, in the cells of which the value of the relationship between the indicators is indicated. …is ranked based on assigned weights and ratings.

For the implementation of the selected projects, it will be necessary to change the ranks of strengths and weaknesses. This will be reflected in the final matrix. The indicators of feasibility, potential and importance calculated in the matrix make it possible to form a list of marketing projects that ensure the realization of opportunities and the neutralization of threats. By comparing the final and initial matrices, one can assess how much the value of the project's feasibility has increased.

Sales forecasts can be expertly generated by asking your sales managers for sales estimates... ...and using the built-in Box-Jenkins model in Marketing Expert 2 to provide seasonally adjusted statistical sales forecasts.
Marketing Expert 2 allows you to create models corresponding to them and compare them with each other, based on the planned profitability. The promising projects obtained in the SWOT analysis determine various marketing strategies. In this case, the relative deviation of indicators of one strategy model from another is automatically calculated. User tables are used for additional analysis.
When comparing the profitability of different strategies in terms of promotion, marketing costs for their implementation are taken into account. For each event, the timing of its implementation, cost, as well as products and segments to which marketing costs will be allocated are indicated. Event costs will be treated as direct fixed costs when calculating the profitability of the corresponding strategy.

Main Benefits Marketing Expert 2 Creation of a model of the company's activities in the market Possibility of implementing own analytical methods and matrices Organization of expert surveys and processing of survey results Importing sales data from the Sales Expert CRM system and user databases PRO-INVEST INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES

What will be implemented in the next versions of Marketing Expert 2 Reporting Choice various models forecasting Implementation of the BSC methodology for plan-fact analysis Additional method templates Import of directories on segmentation criteria Development of opportunities for conducting surveys (questionnaires based on) and processing the results obtained PRO-INVEST INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES

Demo videos and detailed description functionality can be obtained from the developers' websites.

The family of Marketing Expert programs (we will call the whole family by the name of the first program) consists of three independent programs, each of which solves a subset of marketing research tasks:

Marketing Expert- a set of analytical tools for building a marketing plan (BCG, SWOT, etc.), preparing a financial plan marketing activities companies.
Marketing GEO- Maintaining and analyzing marketing information.
Marketing Analytic- a specialized OLAP client for analyzing marketing data in terms of markets, products, etc.

This family of programs is undoubtedly 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 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.

Marketing GEO - GIS + Analytics

Separately, a few words should be said about the GEO and Analyst systems. They implement a set of functionality that has existed for a long time, but only within the framework of large systems. In some matters (maintaining your own geoinformation and other data), the transition to easy solutions looks completely unjustified, and what can be trusted with the combination of ArcView + Oracle Express should not be trusted by Marketing Analytic in any case, but where ready-made information bases are used and you need a quick analysis, the use of Marketing Expert series programs will be quite reasonable.

Marketing Expert - market map

Despite the fact that the programs are implemented as independent, the separation is rather arbitrary and is caused more by the intricacies of the legal relationship between developers than by real necessity. In reality, the systems are strongly integrated with each other, especially ideologically.