CRS gives you the tools you need to use the vast amount of information that is collected through daily interactions with consumers. Our query, reporting and online analytical tools ensure that the data is translated into actionable information -- and information that is easily disseminated throughout your organization.
Choosing the right formatA picture (or graph) is can be worth a 1000 words, so use graphs where ever you can to make your point. You choose the style (line, bar, pie, 3-D or 2-D, etc.) that best suits your needs. All graphs are created in Microsoft Chart and Excel for flexible handling. When you have more numbers than will fit on a graph, print a report to show the data.
CRS offers a wide variety of report formats for you to choose from. Here are just a few examples and how they might be used:
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Contacts by Month and Contacts by Quarter reports. Look at up to four years worth of monthly or quarterly numbers to identify where your efforts have gone and where they may need to go in the future. You'll be able to easily spot trends with these multi-year and year-over-year views! |
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Comparison Reports. Use these reports to compare time periods and calculate the percent changes - this year to last year, this quarter to last quarter, this month to same month last year, this week to same week last year, etc. You'll be able to quickly identify key issues because the system shows you the rate of change. |
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Marketing Detail Reports. Get specific! Use these reports to show the words and nuances of consumer contacts with your department - especially issues relating to advertising, promotions, advertising and fulfillment or where usability and preference are involved. And, of course, marketing will need to know the details about those new products and reformulations! These reports include the verbatim/comment field to further clarify any issue. |
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Manufacturing Detail Reports. When problems are identified, quality assurance and manufacturing need the specifics before they can begin to get to the root cause and begin to resolve the problems. These reports include the verbatim/comment field to further clarify issues. Use these reports to communicate this information quickly and easily - particularly the location, production code and date. |
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Productivity Reports. Use this report to understand how the workload of your department is being handled. Who is doing what and how long is it taking? |
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Enclosure Reports. Use the Reorder, Inventory and Usage reports to keep track of your literature, coupons and other enclosures. Know how many you are using and when to order before you run out. |
In CRS you have complete control over which records you print and in what order.
Use up to nine levels of ordering - for example:
1-Product
2-Subject
3-Location
4-Plant Code
and then easily define nested totals and subtotals using these levels.
Independent of those levels you pick the selection criteria (where-clause) - including wildcard text searches.
Ranking dataTo highlight problem areas and reduce the "clutter", you may want to rank summary reports so that the issues are printed in descending frequency order - that is, the biggest problems are listed first within any category. You can specify how many codes to display or what percent of the total number of codes and a cutoff value (e.g. don't show the 1's and 2's). Your users may greatly appreciate reports that show only the top 10 codes so they can more easily see what's most important. Normalizing data
To see the "bigger" picture, normalize your contact data by comparing contact rates to an outside volume measurement. In addition to showing the raw contact numbers, your reports can show ratios - or complaint "rates" (e.g. 10 per 1,000,000 units sold). From this information you'll have a better idea of when changes are meaningful and worth pursuing further. Perhaps your company will want to establish measures for performance and drive "process improvement" using these measurements.
This normalization data can come from a variety of sources including production, distribution, sales, Neilson, IRI or other volume measurements that are appropriate to your business.
Scheduling, viewing and archiving reportsYou'll probably want to set up groups of reports to run at defined times - e.g. quarterly, monthly, weekly. Simply set up the specifications once and use them as needed.
If you'd rather run your report(s) at night, specify the time and put them in the task queue for execution later.
When reports are complete, they'll be waiting for you on the printer or in your personal Report Catalog.
Since reports are generated in standard Microsoft Office format, you easily pass them to others for review, manipulate them, or incorporate them in other documents (e.g. email, report to the president, etc.). Reports generated as Excel spreadsheets can be further sorted, filtered, graphed, pivoted, etc.
Use the Report Catalog to archive reports. You can schedule reports to run at night, then view them the following day. Until a report is deleted, it can be viewed over and over without the expense of regenerating it. Use this single report for many purposes.
Querying data interactivelyCRS offers several tools for interactive research and investigation. For example, using the Detail Inquiry tool, you specify the columns and records you want to select. The data is returned into a spreadsheet view for total a hoc graphing and analysis. Defining your own reports
CRS comes with three levels of ad hoc reporting tools to suit the needs of all your users. Use the CRS general inquires; complete user-friendly report generator, Results; or our sophisticated programmer report development tools. Electronically distributing reports
All reports and graphs can be emailed to your users. Email instructions are stored with your report set up for automatic sending. Accessing data with your own tools
Do you have a favorite already? Or corporate standard? Use Crystal Reports, Business Objects, Impromptu/Power Play, CorVu and other similar tools to access your CRS data. Or, use our export programs to populate your corporate data warehouse and go from there.
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