Neal Analytics wins retail customers like Mars Drinks through co-selling with Microsoft

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Co-selling leads to joint wins

Over the past few years, Neal Analytics has worked hand-in-hand with Microsoft’s Industry Sales team to co-sell into the Retail and Consumer Goods space. Targeting customers within that vertical has been successful “because of our industry focus, and because of what we’re doing from a machine learning and algorithmics perspective” said David Brown, Alliance Manager at Neal Analytics.

“We have seen tremendous business value through our partnership with Microsoft, specifically in co-selling with the Microsoft field,” said Greg Gomez, Vice President of Sales at Neal Analytics. “Our co-selling efforts have resulted in joint wins in the retail sector with customers like Mars Drinks and Arca Continental.”

A valuable partnership

David McClellan, Practice Director at Neal Analytics, agreed that the collaboration between the two companies had been beneficial. “Microsoft and Neal Analytics has worked together time and again to propose competitive offerings which are consistently selected over those of several major competitors in the cloud and analytics markets. We feel this partnership has proven exceptionally valuable for our customers as we are able to provide real business value in a rapid and actionable manner.”

According to Brown, the industry the two companies focus on depends on who is leading the effort. “Most of the time, if we’re leading a Customer Engagement, it’s in the retail sector. That’s where we’ve got the deepest network and the most existing clients,” he said. “Things get really fun when you can co-sell into a target industry together and have the business value conversation. Then you can drive some real, tangible wins and make a difference.”

Arca Continental

One customer that chose a Neal Analytics solution built on Microsoft technology was beverage distributor Arca Continental, which hired Neal Analytics to better shape its understanding of its key business drivers and the impact of its product offerings on its business. The team at Neal Analytics combined data science techniques and their Microsoft technology expertise to identify a variety of market forces and worked with the Arca team to optimize its product offerings. Now Neal Analytics is helping Arca Continental expand its advanced analytics platform into additional markets they serve.

Mars Drinks

Another customer that chose the Neal Analytics-Microsoft Azure combination was Mars Drinks. The beverage solutions provider realized they needed to build a scalable and flexible analytics platform that would grant them visibility into their customers. Using components from the Microsoft Azure IoT Suite, Cortana Intelligence Suite, and Power Platform, the Mars Drinks and Neal Analytics teams created a global platform for advanced analytics. This solution allows Mars Drinks to better understand their customers and optimize profitability.

“The analytics platform based on Azure helps our partners because it tells them when to stock machines, and it helps us because we can identify which partners need to improve,” said Jamie Head, Chief Information Officer at Mars Drinks. “We can give them simple, actionable data that can be acted on straightaway.”

Brown said he anticipates the co-selling relationship between Neal Analytics and Microsoft to continue to be fruitful going forward. “It’s been great co-selling with Microsoft. I really enjoy co-selling with the Microsoft teams. They’re very effective, dependable sellers. We look forward to continuing and deepening our co-selling relationship with Microsoft in the future,” he said.