B&O PLAYs CDM SOLUTION SPEAKS VOLUMES

TO PARTNER NETWORK
B&O PLAY was launched in 2012 as a new brand by Bang & Olufsen, the global provider of luxury, integrated
audio-video solutions and services. Oering portable products that are intuitive to use and easy to integrate into
daily life whilst delivering excellent high-quality experiences, B&O PLAY's focus is on providing the contemporary
design and audio experience preferred by the digital generation.

www.zyme.com
B&O PLAY has always taken a pro-active approach to driving supply into the market. In the early stages of developing the business, the
challenge was predominantly about getting product into the market and creating demand and awareness for the brand. Thanks to rapid
growth and strong traction in the market, B&O PLAY now has around 30 distributors and around 5,700 selling points across the world. It
recently became clear that the company needed to make sure that the growth was sustainable. It was critical that the company got an
immediate grasp on its sales data in order to fully understand the channel and its needs, and ultimately sustain this early success.

Demand from the management team for

greater visibility of the channel was borne
out of our desire to be a data-driven
company. We realised that as a lean but
ambitious organisation, we needed to make
the most eective use of our time and
resources to maximise our potential and
that making data part of our DNA was the
solution.

Kasper Frederiksen,
Business Analyst at B&O PLAY.
Realising that it had limited visibility on the day to day activities and
performance of its distribution and retail channel B&O PLAY selected Zyme's
cloud-based Channel Data Management (CDM) platform to improve sales data
quality and reporting across its network of partners. The decision to select Zyme
was made following a detailed competitive vendor review process which resulted
in Zyme being rated as the most comprehensive solution provider, capable of
meeting the company's specic business needs and requirements. 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. B&O PLAY
also identied Zyme as the best vendor from a features and functionality
perspective and the level of knowledge and thought leadership that the team
was able to bring to the table regarding Channel Data Management.

Frederiksen explains: It was clear from the outset that investing in Zyme would
not only provide us with an IT solution. It would also provide us with a
professional partner that would share best practices and help us to get the most
from our channel data. Zyme's commitment to collaboration and the continuous
development of new services and solutions was also important.

Although prior to the adoption of Zyme's CDM solution, B&O PLAY's distributors
were sending in monthly sell-through and inventory reports, data from the
partner was not always shared by the immediate account manager to the wider
team. As a result, channel management decisions were based on incomplete
partner data. Zyme's CDM solution automated data collection and validation,
and generated reports to assess the eectiveness and eiciency of channel
marketing and sales activities, as well as managing the performance of retail
partners.
Wanting to keep pace with consumer demands B&O PLAY
considered it vital that the business could support its wider team
by providing access to all available data, not only enabling them
to deep-dive into specic partner data, but also to analyse
patterns on a wider scale. It wanted to make product and sales
decisions as close to real-time as possible and recognised that
nding a long-term CDM solution that could provide a global view
of the business had become essential.
This was the rst time that B&O PLAY was asking all of its
distributors to submit their reports via one system. It was critical
that any solution deployed was easy to access, use and then
integrate with other downstream applications in order to ensure
that any change in processes did not reduce the overall success of
the initiative.
B&O PLAY now has access to one global dashboard which has
become 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. The technology
was fully embraced by the entire team and the business benets
have become clear.
Accessing channel data on demand has enabled B&O PLAY to
adapt its marketing outreach, as business based intelligence can
now be considered when devising and evaluating the success of
dierent campaigns. B&O PLAY is better able to evaluate the
investment of its marketing dollars and how to secure improved
returns from Marketing Development Funds (MDF).
Deploying the Zyme solution was a signicant step forward for the
business. The conguration team will be able to forecast supply
and demand with much improved accuracy and enhanced
transparency in the channel and it will enable B&O PLAY to
support existing partners and grow alongside them. B&O PLAY has
no doubt that this investment will bring value to the organisation
and plans are in place to include more retailers in this new data
capture and sharing initiative.
We have only seen the tip of the iceberg so far, said Frederiksen.
Having the right data and facts on the table is becoming more
and more important and is particularly true in the world of
audio-visual products, where technology and consumer demand
moves at such a fast pace.

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