Perspectives
Our consultants, who average 15 years business and consulting experience, are sought-after thought leaders.
Most Recent Publications
Energizing Trade Promotion Optimization
Now is the time to energize your TPO strategy. Not only will you influence your top and bottom line performance, but you’ll better collaborate with your retail partners, and most importantly, improve the shopper’s experience.
Case Study: Sales Reporting and Analytics Solution 
Partnering with Clarkston Consulting, the company worked to transition its sales reporting and analytics away from a 100% outsourced solution. At the completion of the project, the company was able to cut days in turnaround time for data requests, empower their mobile sales force with a dashboard reporting solution, reduce their reliance on third-party systems and processes, and integrate their sales data with key operational data.
Optimizing Financial Planning and Consolidation for Global Expansion
SAP – the ERP solution that already helps so many businesses ‘run better’, offers a solution in this area formally called Business Planning and Consolidation – typically referred to as BPC – a solution that is part of the Enterprise Performance Management Suite (EPM). In this Viewpoint, we talk with Anand Nataraj – a Principal at Clarkston Consulting and a subject matter expert in Business Intelligence and Enterprise Performance Management solutions.
Cloud-Based or On-Premise HCM: Life Sciences
The marketplace for Human Capital Management (HCM) solutions has seen an extraordinary amount of acquisition and consolidation activity in the past six months. The activity related to cloud-based HCM solutions for Life Sciences companies is far outpacing any other application of cloud-based technologies.
Cloud-Based or On-Premise HCM: Consumer Products
The marketplace for Human Capital Management (HCM) solutions has seen an extraordinary amount of acquisition and consolidation activity in the past six months. The activity related to cloud-based HCM solutions for Consumer Products companies is far outpacing any other application of cloud-based technologies.
Solution Overview: Serialization & Traceability
With regulatory requirements looming and a growing desire to prevent counterfeiting, tampering, theft, and diversion, companies must begin to look at Serialization and Track & Trace solutions to better control the chain of custody in their supply chain. Solutions such as SAP Auto-Id and Object Event Repository, also known as AIE, provide companies with robust solutions to address these challenges.
How is the Private Label Evolving?
Retailers with private label products now have greater flexibility in their pricing strategy, according to research conducted by Clarkston Consulting. As part of this Retail Experience study, Clarkston Consulting expected to see increasing numbers of private label brands being carried on retail shelves. However, there were pricing trends among major brands compared to their private label counterparts that were surprising. Interested in better understanding this trend, Clarkston surveyed over 200 consumers across 28 states on their motivations for purchasing store brand products versus traditional national brands.
Quality in Generic Pharmaceuticals
Quality in Generic Pharmaceuticals reviews FDA data related to quality inspections at pharmaceutical manufacturers, specifically comparing the number of actions resulting from a facility inspection at both generic and brand-name manufacturers.
Managing the Variable Demand of New Products
According to industry estimates, instances of out-of-stock cost retailers a 4 percent
loss in category sales and, more importantly for Consumer Products companies,
lead to a shopper completely switching brands over 25 percent of the time.
While CP companies have become increasingly sophisticated in forecasting demand and promotional plans based upon ‘like’ products, there still is a great deal of unpredict-
ability with new products and, because of this, a greater likelihood of out-of-stocks.
