We've got your number.

The market's crowded. Other companies are bigger. Other products are cheaper. Other brands are better-known. What's your edge? For these three companies, it was information--and what they did with it.

AS YOU LIKE IT BASS TAVERNS 

For more than two centuries, the Bass corporation has brewed some of the United Kingdom's best-known beer, much of which was sold through a network of pubs owned by the company. But in 1989, Bass was reorganized, and its brewing and pub operations were separated. Bass Taverns was created as the $1.5 billion retailing arm of the Bass PLC group--and executives found themselves quickly adopting a new mindset.

"Up to that point, we thought of ourselves as brewers, with pubs as outlets," says Bass Taverns Chief Executive Tim Clarke. "But that focus changed dramatically. We were no longer selling beer; what we were actually selling was the outlet and the experience that people get there."

Those outlets included more than 4,000 facilities that ran the gamut from neighborhood pub to fine restaurant, and from brandnew pubs to some dating back to the 13th century. Creating corporate marketing programs that fit the individual needs of these varied outlets presented a big challenge. "We knew intuitively that our pubs were all different, depending on clientele, location, and setup," says Brian Wilson, IT director at Bass Taverns. "But we didn't have the information we needed to make a distinction on a tactical level. We were forced by our infrastructure to follow a one-size-fitsall approach to marketing."

To get that information, Bass worked with Unisys to develop a nationwide point-of-sale network that links its pubs to headquarters. In each pub, keypads and touch-screen cash registers feed information about food and beverage sales to an in-pub PC, which is used by the pub manager to keep track of business. This PC in turn feeds that information to Bass' central computers, allowing main-office decision makers to keep close tabs on sales across the country.

Bass is now working to squeeze more out of that information asset. Using a new decision-support system, the company can rapidly mine its vast accumulation of data to produce highly detailed profiles of customer activity, to the point where executives can easily get a look at sales patterns at an individual pub for different times of the day. The result: a clearer picture of what different segments of customers like, and the ability to target marketing at those segments.

"We can now differentiate along very fine lines," says Wilson. For example, Bass runs community pubs, destination pubs, and city-town pubs, among others. "Our customers come to each type on different occasions, and their spending patterns vary for each one." Customers generally go to community pubs because they are close and convenient--a neighborhood bar. Destination pubs are for special occasions. And city-town pubs tend to draw work crowds. "So, with detailed information about each pub, we can make sure we are focusing on marketing premium beers at the destination pub. At the community pub, we can offer special packages for groups that gather to talk or play checkers. And at city pubs, we can offer lunch specials and after-work parties."

Bass can also keep close track of the effectiveness of promotions. For example, on St. Patrick's Day in 1995, the company tested different prices for Irish brews at different pubs. Some offered a discount; some offered regular prices; and some offered a combination of entertainment and beers at premium prices. Surprisingly, the pubs offering discounts actually sold less beer, while sales of the premium-priced brews skyrocketed. "People turned out in large numbers at the pubs offering entertainment," says Wilson. "We found that if people are out to enjoy themselves, and you can enhance it in some way, they're willing to pay more." As a result, Bass offered the premium packages at more pubs this year, leading to "our most successful St. Paddy's day ever," he says.

Taking that idea a step further, the new decision support system will let Bass monitor the effectiveness of an ad campaign or trial promotion while it's in progress. That means the company can fine-tune these efforts as they go along: adjusting the mix of pricing, food, beverages; getting feedback; and adjusting again, until a winning combination is found.

So far, the company's use of the decision-support system is "just the tip of the iceberg," says Wilson. Because the system allows information to be cross-referenced in virtually any manner executives can think of, "it will allow us to look at our information in different ways, to make connections and ask questions we never thought of asking before."

"The demand for information at Bass Taverns is galloping ahead at an enormous pace," Wilson says. "But that means our organization is getting better and better information about what is making the business tick, and what might make it tick faster and better in the future." When it comes to information, he adds, "the more, the merrier."

Easy to Do Business With

Cooper Tire and Rubber

In the mid-1980s, the U.S. tire industry saw its share of mergers and acquisitions, as companies scrambled to become big, global players. Cooper Tire and Rubber, a Findlay, OH, manufacturer, grew, too. But it did so the old-fashioned way: by selling more tires.

Over the past decade, Cooper has enjoyed steady double-digit annual growth. Revenues have gone from $522 million to $1.5 billion, and, in a mature industry with heavy competition, the company has increased market share from 7 percent to more than 14 percent.

Cooper has built a reputation for being a low-cost, high-quality producer. At the same time, it has been ranked No. 1 in customer service in two recent industry surveys. That combination of price and service has given it its greatest strength: a loyal customer base that includes some 1,400 independent tire dealers as well as several major chains such as Sears and Pep Boys in the U.S., and Autobacs in Japan. "We have always maintained a good relationship with our dealers, and we work at that," says CEO Patrick W. Rooney. "When they're successful, we're successful." Those relationships have provided stability in a turbulent market, he says, and have been instrumental in helping Cooper grow at nine times the industry rate in recent years.

Especially important, says Thomas Griffith, Cooper's vice president of marketing, has been the company's ability to manage information "to make sure we are real easy to do business with." For example, Cooper uses a sophisticated replenishment system that makes it possible to keep inventories low and shipping costs under control. The system feeds information on sales, customer orders, inventory, and production to logistics planners, who use it to decide where to ship tires coming off the line. Most new tires are loaded directly onto trucks and driven to the Cooper warehouse that's closest to the customer that will eventually need them. "It lets us get the tires to the customers on time, as quickly and as accurately as possible," says John Mitchell, the company's director of information systems.

The system has proven to be very effective, but Cooper is continuing to build on that base. "Our competitors don't take us lightly; they come after us daily," says Griffith. "And our customer-relationship advantage is certainly an edge we want to maintain, because it seems that any other advantage any company has these days tends to be somewhat short-lived."

"Information is growing in importance for us and for our dealers," says Mitchell. "So we are pursuing the concept that anyone in the company can get access to the information they need to help customers right from their desktop." Cooper is now augmenting its mainframe based replenishment system with a client-server network that will allow the company to collect and share information about customers and orders via PCs.

The new system will, in essence, consolidate and automate several steps, creating an information flow that will streamline service. For example, in the past, when a customer called in to place an order, that order had to go through the billing department and the traffic department and then back to sales before the customer could get a confirmation. The new system will reduce that three- or four-hour process down to seconds. Similarly, customers calling with questions will get fast answers. "Our person on the phone will have access to all the information they need to help that customer." And the system will allow Cooper to be "more proactive in helping the customer," says Mitchell.

In all, this new information make better decisions," says Mitchell. "We will be ready to meet any need the dealer might have. Being on top of things like that will only tighten our relationships with customers."

Another Day, Another Product

ENTEL 

If you want to just how fast the business landscape can change these days, go to Chile. In 1994, that country's deregulated, creating one of the most competitive telecom arenas in the world. Ten international carriers immediately jumped in, including Northern Telecom, Telefonica Spain, and Southwestern Bell. Within weeks, the price of a typical call to the U.S. dropped from $2 to $.20. Overnight, long distance service become a commodity.

For Chile's consumers, it was a boon. For ENTEL, the carrier that traditionally had a monopoly in the country's long-distance market, it was a harsh new reality. To survive, says Richard Bochi, general manager of the carrier, ENTEL could not compete solely on price, or even on advanced technology, which is easily duplicated by competitors. "We had to win on how we managed information. Our biggest corporate asset is not our phone lines and network infrastructure. It's our information, and how we use it."

To differentiate itself in a suddenly crowded market, ENTEL began developing new information-based products aggressively, rolling out one every three days for the better part of a year. "Two years ago, we had two products--long distance calls and local calls," says Konrad Burchardt, the company's director of marketing. "Now we have more than 100."

In large part, that effort has meant taking advantage of the rapid convergence of computing and telecommunications technologies. Using NAP--a Unisys system that links powerful database and software-creation tools directly to the telephone network--ENTEL has created products ranging from voice mail to customized corporate calling plans to a service that lets customers buy national lottery tickets via touch-tone phone. In the works: services that offer stock market reports and travel and weather information. In addition to driving product development, ENTEL is using information to determine which products will be hits. Phone companies have always had huge amounts of data generated by tracking and billing calls. "We've had the data, but not the information," says Burchardt. "We need information to understand the market and know the customer more precisely."

ENTEL is now using a custom-developed decision-support system--the Traffic Executive Information System, or TEIS--to help make sense of all that calling data. TEIS lets executives understand customer calling patterns and determine what services and promotions might appeal to whom. "If we see that certain customers are making a lot of calls to Miami, for instance, we can make some assumptions about their upcoming travel needs and could come up with a calling-card promotion and offer it to those customers in conjunction with a Florida hotel and an airline," says Burchardt. The system even takes advantage of the fact that calling information in Chile is, by law, publicly available. "So, we can tell exactly when a customer changes to a competitor, and exactly how many calls the competition is handling.

"What we have accomplished is a very intricate segmentation of the market," Burchardt continues--and that leads to the development of more and more closely targeted products. And as new products and marketing programs are deployed, "we can track the results of the efforts, and see how much they increase traffic and revenue and the profit that we are earning from that segment," he says. "That helps us develop new strategies for the future."

A strong emphasis on managing information has paid off for ENTEL, says Burchardt. In spite of heavy competition, the company holds a leading 40 percent share of the market. "And we are growing that market share. We are handling more traffic now than when we were a monopoly. We are earning money, and many of our competitors are not. Clearly, we see that information is the most important asset a communications provider has."