Brand Manager Portal
By Uwe Ott, SAP AG, IBS Consumerproducts, IU Retail – December 22, 2000
Disclaimer: Please note that this edition was written in 2000. Therefore, statements in the articles, particularly those regarding SAP's products, product strategy, branding strategy, and organizational structure, may no longer be valid.
The following article describes the Brand Manager Portal from the Greenfield initiative. Similar to the other portals in this initiative, this project is also primarily a design/feasibility study, the results of which will be incorporated within future products. First of all, the role of the brand manager is defined in detail, followed by an outline of how this role is supported by MiniApps. In conclusion there is a brief overview of the whole portal and its views, plus customer feedback and prospects for the future.
The Brand Manager Role
The brand manger is responsible for the growth and positioning of the brand on the market. Tasks include the continual improvement of existing products and launching new products. Furthermore, the manager is very influential in the product costing and in defining the distribution channels for getting his brand articles onto the market. He is also responsible for the planning, coordinating, and monitoring of advertising for his brand.
The information required is obtained from various channels, including trade magazines, internal documentation and business data, information from the Internet (Web pages from competitors, key accounts, prices, products, advertising ...), database services, market research services ...
Key indicators such as market share, sales revenues, profit margin, cost accounting, costs of his products and advertising are used to measure his performance.
Different information needs result from this role description: external, regarding his competitors, competitors' products, customers, market share ... and internal, such as brand-specific information with regard to delivery of the products, sales revenue, costs, advertising activities ...
Overview of the Portal
Figure 1: Brand Manager Portal - the brand view (click for larger image)
The information issues listed above were taken into account in the structure of the Workplace, in the form of planning different information areas:
External Info
- Competitors
- Customers
Internal Informationen
- Knowledge Warehouse
Brand-Specific Business Internal Info
- AC Nielsen
- Daily Shipment Alert
- Promotion Chart
- Profit/Loss
- Shared Folder
The brand manager receives internal, industry-independent information. This includes Outlook, a calendar, internal system news, and internal company news. Tools provide accessories such as a calculator, measurement converter, route planner, traffic watch ...
The MiniApps available can be personalized so that the user can decide whether a certain MiniApp is displayed or not and in which tab position he wants to put the MiniApp.
The MiniApps are allocated through a person's role and user. New MiniApps can only be added to a role by an administrator and can be changed by the user within the limits named.
External Information
The brand manager receives daily information on his direct competitors via the Internet to satisfy his information requirements regarding competitors of his brand. Content providers supply this information pool and ensure that the information is always up to date. Using the personalization link in the Workplace, the individual MiniApps can be switched off, if required, to meet individual information needs.
In the same way the brand manager obtains information on the key account.
This push process is enhanced by Search MiniApps that give the brand manager the option of receiving information on other companies from the content providers online.
Figure 2: News and Search in the External News view of the Brand Manager Portal (click for larger image)
Brand-specific Information
The brand-specific information consists of both external and internal information.
What is important here is external information in the form of key figures that give the brand manager a picture of the market situation, for which he is directly responsible (AC Nielsen). The internal view of the brand is represented through the MiniApps Daily Shipment Alert, Promotion Chart, and Profit/Loss.
AC Nielsen
This MiniApp delivers data, for example from AC Nielsen, that is prepared via the MiniApp using BW queries for certain key figures, in this case market share and all-commodities value. What is important is that the information is made transparent on high aggregation levels to provide a quick overview. Searching on the detail level must of course be possible too. For this purpose there is a link to the query below the MiniApp.
Maps for the brand manager's market provide transparent information for him. He can display the information on the country level by clicking his market segments (Great Britain, France, Germany). It is not possible to drill down any further to the federal state level.
Figure 3: The AC-Nielsen MiniApp
Daily Shipment Alert
This MiniApp displays exceptions for the brand manager, which give him a picture of the current supply situation within the distribution channels used and the Promotable Groups defined for the brand.
Figure 4: Daily shipment alert MiniApp
Clicking on the link to the Promotable Groups, the brand manager gets a detailed view of the advertising group on the article level, where he can directly see if there are any problems with any of the articles.
Clicking on the link to the sales channel, you see a detailed view displaying the key accounts and the number of current exceptions listed by country. There are other drilldown options using the filter in Web reporting.
Promotion Chart
This MiniApp gives the brand manager an overview of existing advertising. The advertising is differentiated by media, consumer, and supplier acquisitions, and displayed for a period of five months. The display duration can be moved 4 weeks at a time using the page turning function.
Figure 5: Promotion chart MiniApp with promotions shown as timelines
Detailed information on the respective advertising is displayed with Mouseover. This may be the name of the advertised product or product group, name of the customer, or advert slogan. The project status of the measure is displayed by clicking.
Profit/Loss
This MiniApp gives the brand manager information about the current profit and cost situation for the individual article groups. The revenue (plan and actual), profit, all sales costs, including material and distribution costs, and advertising costs are displayed.
Figure 6: Profit/loss Mini App with multiple bar chart
Structure of the Portal
Launchpad versus Menus
Unlike many other Greenfield portals, the Budget Manager Portal does not have a Launchpad. Instead a simple approach is pursued that focuses on the normal menu bar in Windows applications: Below the company logo there is a navigation bar with the name of the views of the brand manager portal. If the user moves the mouse over such a text, the appropriate menu of this view, if available, opens.
Figure 7: The menu of the Brand view
Die Views of the Brand Manager Portal
As already mentioned, there is a navigation bar at the upper edge of the picture below the company logo. It offers access to the individual views of the brand manager portal. The following views are offered
- External News: Company search, stock search, search, news, competitor news, key account news
- Internal News: Company news, menu of the day
- Office: SMS, events, Outlook inbox, workflow inbox
- Brand: The main view, which is described in this article
- Tools: Measurement converter, world time, calendar, route planner (for example, map & guide)
However, only the brand view, described in this article, has been fully developed.
Figure 8: The views of the Brand Manager Portal
Customer Feedback and New Trends
Customer feedback has up to now shown that the user returns to portals of this type. The structuring by task content and the personalizing option are very well received. By presenting such portals the customer becomes clear about the significance of mySAP.com.
From our point of view there are still not enough ways for the user to make external information accessible, for example, competitor information from the Internet, via information providers. What are required here are simple personalizing mechanisms that can be used by everyone and not just administrators.
There is also a need to have aggregation levels personalized by the user. For example, a brand manager may use the MiniApp of the AC Nielsen data at the whole market level and he enters at the highest aggregation level, while a brand analyst is responsible for a smaller market segment and needs a different entry level.
Also desirable is the option to store reports at certain points so that personal analyses can be made at a later date.
