The DSR Market: The Fastest Growing Enterprise Software
A Demand Signal Repository (DSR) is the core database that holds store level data for use by a consumer goods company. DSRs can also include a variety of data streams, but if the repository does not include the ability to leverage store level demand data � particularly POS data or Direct Store Delivery (DSD) data � it is not a DSR.
The DSR marketplace also includes the analytics or applications that leverage the data from a DSR to allow profitable collaboration with retailers. These applications are used by retail account teams, category managers, marketing professionals, supply chain teams, and the store merchandising team.
The DSR marketplace had year over year growth (2009 over 2008) of 49 percent in the midst of a brutal global recession. No other enterprise market had close to this kind of growth.
The core conflict at the heart of this market is that this is a fast growing market, but the core solutions are still immature. The potential ROI of these solutions is massive, but the hurdles that must be overcome to gain those kinds of returns are also huge. How can this market cross over from serving a very small number of very large companies, to a much broader set of customers?
Strategic Issues
Because this is an extremely fast growing market, but in many ways an immature market, it makes strategic issues particularly critical:
- How fast will this market grow and what are the key drivers?
- The ROI of these solutions is potentially massive. What are the core ROI buckets?
For consumer goods companies to achieve maximum returns on their investments in these technologies they must overcome huge barriers:
- What are the key cultural barriers?
- What are the technological barriers?
- What are the cost barriers?
