Press Releases   MSA in the News (Reprints)

Contact: Management Science Associates (412) 362-2000 info@msa.com John McIndoe Information Resources, Inc. (312) 474-3862 john.mcindoe@infores.com IRI Continues to Expand Channel Coverage, Adding Vending Sales Through Relationship with MSA IRI and MSA Form Relationship to Expand Marketplace Visibility for Confections and Snacks Manufacturers in Vending Arena CHICAGO and PITTSBURGH, PA – October 13, 2004 – Confections and snack manufacturers will finally be able to track sales of their products through vending machines using a new service to be delivered by Information Resources, Inc. (IRI). IRI and Management Science Associates, Inc. (MSA) today announced a strategic relationship that will provide confections and snacks manufacturers with new and previously unavailable visibility into confections and snacks sales and highly-accurate projected channel trends in the vending arena. Under the relationship, IRI will bundle MSA’s ProVenTM dataset, the first syndicated nationally projected vend sales data, with IRI’s InfoScan® Food, Drug, Mass and Convenience Store data to provide a significantly expanded view of the vending marketplace and new competitive insights to drive increased growth and profitability. The combination of MSA’s ProVen with IRI’s InfoScan data will offer manufacturers a deeper understanding of category share and competitive trends by geographic region and machine location for benchmarking purposes. The national and regional sales data will be available through IRI’s InfoScan toolset and seamlessly integrated with the other IRI channels, creating an easy-to-access, unified view of the manufacturer’s business. "MSA has provided premier analytics including sophisticated custom projection methodologies and forecasting solutions to leading CPG companies for nearly a halfcentury and we are pleased to be partnering with them," said Scott W. Klein, President and CEO, IRI. "Over the past 12 months, IRI has made significant strides in increasing coverage for its clients, creating new innovative relationships with several leading retailers to offer unique insights. Our relationship with MSA extends that effort, leveraging IRI's core capability in providing data integration solutions and MSA’s unique vending data stream to fill another important coverage gap for confections and snacks manufacturers. These new capabilities offer tremendous benefit to the CPG industry and enable IRI to provide entirely new visibility that can represent as much as 15% of sales for major confections and snacks manufacturers." Supporting IRI’s ongoing initiatives to increase the value and relevance of marketplace information in key industry verticals such as confections and snacks, the vending channel insights provide a host of new capabilities, enabling manufacturers to: Understand the dynamics and competitive set in the vending channel Develop insight on what drives growth trends More effectively test the impact of distribution and assortment changes on competitors and category sales Make fact-based channel development investments Implement more effective demand planning Dr. Alfred Kuehn, Founder and CEO of MSA stated "We are excited to join with IRI on this offering. IRI is the known leading provider of syndicated marketplace information to the confections and snack foods industries across the traditional retail channels. MSA is the only organization that has succeeded in creating an accurate, projected information source to fill the void in the Vending channel. Aligning ProVen with IRI's brand and geography hierarchies will allow companies to effortlessly measure and understand greater marketplace coverage; a common goal across all packaged goods organizations." MSA will continue to process and offer VendScape® machine level data, its data engine and a critical input to the ProVen solution, under the VendScape brand. For more information on this integrated solution from IRI and MSA, please visit www.allaboutvending.com. ABOUT MSA Since its incorporation in 1963, Management Science Associates, Inc. (MSA) has established itself as the foremost developer and supplier of effective data solutions to manufacturers and distributors within the various CPG trade channels, including the vend channel. MSA’s core business competencies are the analysis of consumer buying behavior, business analysis, knowledgeware products, media, and information management solutions. MSA provides marketing solutions for 300 clients, including some of the largest U.S. and foreign corporations and institutions. Headquartered in Pittsburgh, MSA has offices in New York; Chicago; Atlanta; High Point, NC; United Kingdom; and Malaysia. More information is available at www.msa.com. ABOUT INFORMATION RESOURCES, INC. Information Resources, Inc. is the leading global provider of market content, analytic services and Business Performance Management (BPM) solutions to the CPG, retail and healthcare industries. IRI's clients include many of the leading CPG, retail, and healthcare companies in the world. IRI's market content and analytic services provide these companies with market and consumer insights. IRI's BPM solutions uniquely combine its breakthrough enterprise analytics software, market content and analytic models to provide a total view of the market and to enable maximum business performance across marketing, sales and operations. IRI's solutions enable the consumer-driven real-time CPG and retail enterprise. More information is available at www.infores.com. ABOUT VENDSCAPE® MSA and Validata Computer and Research Corp. of Montgomery AL have jointly developed the VendScape® service utilizing machine-item information exported from Validata’s RouteSail Millennium Software. The sample consists of over 50,000 vending machines and tracks item-level detail for confections, snacks and beverages. VendScape® reports dollar and unit sales to product manufacturers and vend operators and includes operational measures such as over or short, and sales measures such as distribution and turns.