Reading, UK and Redwood Shores, California – February 10 2016, Zyme, the market leader in the rapidly growing discipline of Channel Data Management (CDM), has today announced that B&O PLAY has signed an agreement to deploy Zyme’s cloud-based CDM solution. The first phase of the initial roll out will be completed by the close of March 2016 but the overall implementation, which will be global, will run until the end of May 2016.

B&O PLAY opened for business in 2012 and now has around 30 distributors. The company is pro-actively driving supply into the market, and now covers around 5,300 selling points across the world due to rapid growth. In the early stages of the business it was all about getting product into the market and creating demand & awareness. Now, growing quickly, B&O PLAY needed to make sure that the growth was sustainable and this was why finding a long-term CDM solution became essential.

B&O PLAY originally had limited visibility on the activities and performance of its distribution and retail channel and whilst distributors were sending in monthly sell-through and inventory reports there was no way to prepare a consolidated overview for analysis. As a result, channel management decisions were based on limited partner data and there was little ability to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of channel marketing or sales activities, or to plan effective support of the retail partners. By engaging with Zyme, B&O PLAY will now have access to one global dashboard which becomes the foundation for creating much improved channel visibility. In addition, it has enabled the company to focus its sales team on driving sales opportunities instead of spending time gathering and analysing inconsistent data.

“Our product traction in the market was growing extremely fast and it was critical that we got an immediate grasp on our sales data in order to fully understand our channel and its needs, and ultimately sustain this early success,” said Viggo Olsen, Director, Global Sales B&O PLAY. “We want to keep pace with consumer demands so it is vital that we can support the wider team with regards to empowering them to make product and sales decisions as close to real-time as possible.”

To ensure the acceptance of the CDM initiative the B&O PLAY team wanted the entire business to be on board with the offering so it invested time ahead of procurement to introduce the concept. This would also be the first time that B&O PLAY was asking all its distributors to submit their reports via one system so it was critical that any solution deployed was easy to access, use and then interrogate. A pilot study was initiated as a proof of concept and five partners were initially invited to participate, using actual business data.

Following a detailed competitive vendor review process the decision was made to appoint Zyme as B&O PLAY felt that the Zyme solution was the most comprehensive and would meet the company’s specific business needs and requirements.

“The benefits were immediately obvious, and the technology was fully embraced by the entire team from the start. We identified Zyme to be the best vendor from a features and functionality perspective but the level of knowledge and consultancy that the Zyme team was also able to bring to the table regarding channel data management could not be matched,” continued Olsen.

Zyme was not only able to guarantee a robust, scalable, solution but it could also deliver an intuitive interface that could be customised to suit each user's needs.

“Accessing channel data on demand will enable B&O PLAY to adapt its marketing outreach, as business based intelligence can then be incorporated in to our campaigns. Deploying the Zyme technology will be a significant step forward for the business, as our configuration team will be able to forecast supply and demand with much improved accuracy. It’s also important for us to understand how we can grow the business with existing partners, which Zyme can hopefully help with by enhancing transparency in our channel. There is no doubt of the value that this investment will bring,” concluded Olsen.

B&O PLAY is already looking to the future and has plans to include more retailers in this data capture and sharing initiative.