“Accountability for marketing and sales spends is a topic that dominates every board room discussion,” opines Balu. V. At a global level, while companies do gain marketing inputs that is responsible for building sales and brand equity, there is scope for improvement, especially in the way they measure their return on investment. “For this, it is important to integrate this domain knowledge in providing actionable insights,” says he. With an aim of filling this gap, Balu and his partner Manoj Tadepalli, set up RainMan Consulting in Bengaluru, India, in September 2009. The company is an end-to-end provider of advanced analytics services and adds value to its clients through domain expertise in marketing, sales and model building.

RainMan works on the key premise that it is possible to use the available data (sourced from internal and external environment) to study the impact of each marketing variables and quantify its impact.  In other words, the company’s techniques brings actionable insight from the data collected from such diverse sources such as POS systems, internal sales tracks, brand tracks, retail tracks, and media exposure studies. It has middleware products that make the entire process faster and efficient resulting in higher profitability for marketers. So far, the company has worked with more than 100 brands from sectors such as consumer packaged goods, automobiles, retail, banking and finance and media. It has seen positive traction since its inception not only with respect to business but also in research and development where it has created effective action based tools.

Capitalising on expertise

Both Balu and Tadepalli have many decades of deep expertise in the areas of marketing, analytics and media and understand the nuances of improving marketing effectiveness of organisations. They were the first to introduce the concept of marketing mix analytics in the Asian market.  RainMan’s team has worked on thousands of models in the FMCG, durables, auto and financial services sectors and is constantly evolving its tools. It believes that true and substantial value can be derived at the cross section of marketing, analytics and media. “This synthesis of skills is what makes the difference as each problem is different and no straight forward solutions are possible without rich marketing and media domain expertise,” opines Balu. RainMan’s tool, Marketing scenario planner and optimizer, is an interactive tool that helps the user to create various scenarios and optimization with ease. Its Octopus is data integration tool that leads to the end solution scenario planner and optimizer is a real differentiator.

Bottom-Line Analytics is RainMan’s partner in the area of marketing effectiveness.  

Going forward

“Given the current uncertain scenarios, it is difficult to plan for three months,” says the co-founder. He adds, “Nevertheless, our aim is to make RainMan the most preferred service provider for the top 50 blue chip companies that invest heavily in marketing and communication.”  

The company is operating in a crowded market place with plethora of service providers. By penetrating deeper into the existing market and strategic expansion into the US market, it aims to feature among the first three brands in consideration amongst prospective clients. To gain this competitive advantage, it aims to remain innovative through continuous investment in R&D and enhance and develop the capabilities of its analytical tools.

Currently, its new business development is through existing client referrals and digital campaigns through mailers. To grow further, the company has started using third party platforms to increase its global exposure.  “Through Analytics Genie’s platform, we would like to penetrate deeper into the US market,” says Balu on a concluding note.

Profit from Marketing Analytics:

Advanced analytics service provider, RainMan Consulting, aims to become the most preferred company amongst the top 50 blue chip customer base. It plans to use Analytics Genie as a platform to facilitate its penetration in the US market.