IRI and Winston Weber Partner to Help CPG Industry Maximize Information Generated by IRI’s Apollo Designer Workstation Solution

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Information Resources, Inc., (IRI) and Winston Weber & Associates, Inc. (WWA) announced today a partnership through which WWA will offer a series of workshops to help IRI’s retail and consumer packaged goods (CPG) customers optimize the information executives receive from IRI’s Apollo Designer Workstation^™ solution as well as generate new, actionable insights.

IRI is the leading global provider of consumer, shopper, and market insights for the CPG, retail, and healthcare industries. WWA offers a broad range of consulting services to retailers and CPG manufacturers and has gained a reputation as the industry’s leading expert on shopper-centric transformation. IRI Apollo Designer Workstation is an easy-to-use desktop product that uses automated procedures to dramatically improve the retail space planning process.

”We turned to WWA to help our customers gain new insights from their Apollo Designer Workstation deployments, based on its outstanding and market proven methodologies,” said IRI Apollo Solutions Group Senior Vice President Shaun Bossons. “IRI is excited to partner with WWA, a recognized leader in customer-centric retailing and space optimization. Our combined capabilities will enable retailers and manufacturers to meet increasing customer demands in the marketplace through more advanced space planning and execution.”

WWA will conduct Apollo assortment and space optimization workshops as part of IRI’s Apollo University curriculum and will be included in IRI’s Regional Training Calendar. Workshops will also be offered to individual IRI clients and will be designed to address the unique issues and challenges they face on a day-to-day basis. WWA will share its Shopper Centric Retailing^SM and Center Store Space Advisor^SM proprietary methodologies for store space optimization. CPG manufacturers and retailers will benefit from applying WWA methodologies, generally regarded as the most leading-edge in the space optimization industry, with IRI’s market-leading software solutions.

“In today’s economic environment, where consumers are making fewer trips but filling larger baskets, CPG retailers must ensure space plans are optimized and in-stock conditions are improved for the specific demographics of the markets they are serving, down to the neighborhood,” said Winston Weber & Associates Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and Founder Win Weber. “This partnership with IRI will help IRI Apollo retail customers assist shoppers by offering the assortments and layouts that facilitate the optimal shopping experience. Industry pressure to improve the shopping experience has created the need to plan at a far more customer-centric, granular level. Apollo’s Designer WorkStation is clearly the market choice to ensure this vision becomes a reality.”

Apollo solutions are the number one choice for space planning automation in retail and provide a solution roadmap that continually builds on success to enable retailers to move from manual space planning to automated, optimized planograms.

IRI’s Apollo solutions are components of IRI’s Customer Centric Retail Execution solution suite, the de-facto standard within the CPG and retail industries. IRI solutions enable CPG and retail companies to adjust stocking levels to demand, improve the efficiency of store operations, proactively plan distribution status, understand and optimize sales trends and ultimately provide a shopping experience that better meets the ever-changing consumer’s needs. Customers can easily integrate these solutions with other space planning programs. Additional detail on IRI’s solutions is available at: http://us.infores.com/ProductsSolutions/tabid/36/Default.aspx

About Winston Weber & Associates

Founded in 1985, WWA is a valuable resource to national and multinational consumer packaged goods manufacturers and retailers from the US, Canada, Mexico, Latin America, Europe, Australia and Asia. WWA has a reputation for having an unparalleled understanding of the consumer packaged goods industry. The organization’s areas of expertise include: strategic direction, organization and business process design, customer alignment, category management to shopper insights transformation, marketing/merchandising, skills development, retailer operational efficiency and shopping experience enhancement. The company is headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee. For more information, visit http://www.winstonweber.com.

About Information Resources, Inc.

IRI is the world’s leading provider of consumer, shopper, and retail market intelligence and insights supporting 95 percent of the FORTUNE Global 500 consumer packaged goods (CPG), retail and healthcare companies. Only IRI offers the unique combination of integrated market information, automated and predictive analytics, innovative enabling technologies, and domain expertise. With IRI, leading retailers and manufacturers are able to quickly discover breakthrough insights driving smarter decisions and actions across the enterprise for breakthrough results. Companies around the world depend on IRI for improved productivity, stronger brands, and dramatic revenue growth. For more information, visit http://us.infores.com.