Nielsen’s COO Mitchell Habib took the stage at TUCON 2013 to share the story of his company’s innovation in partnership with TIBCO. Nielsen’s focus from the early days has been understanding what consumers watch and buy. It’s at the very heart of their business and they are the service of choice across the world. They came to TIBCO to solve the problem that their reporting to customers lagged by as much as 35 to 40 days. Today, they operate in near-real time and are the leader in consumer knowledge, holding the preferences of nearly 5 billion consumers all over the world.
Changing Data
Nielsen connects companies with those preferences in ways that are crucial to their customers’ business. They fundamentally move their customers from knowing what happened at some point in the past to making decisions in the “now” that change what will happen in the future. As an example, Nielsen creates answers on demand to even complex questions by working with TIBCO engineers to shave off six months of lead time on adjustments to categories and geographic areas. Nielsen gives customers the capability to spot even detailed information within stores, like improper shelf placement of products that could affect sales.
Tools to Innovate
One of the biggest problems today is what Habib referred to as fragmentation…the challenge that consumers are interacting with products and programs across many platforms, times of day, and locations. Their services to their customers include the ability to pull together the massive amounts of data that is fragmented across so many places.
Nielsen also uses the tibbr social media platform for enterprises to shed light on innovative ideas that would previously would have gone unseen. A group of young associates took to tibbr and started a discussion about a potential product. They created the “TOPTEN” application for smartphone and tablet. TOPTEN allows consumers to discover and follow popular products and content that they love. It has seen enormous success on iTunes and was recently named “Best New App.”
Habib isn’t shy about giving credit to TIBCO for the partnership that has given them extreme value. “A partner is someone who measures their success by YOUR success, which is what TIBCO has done for Nielsen,” said Habib.
