New Version of Industry-Leading ThinkVine Marketing Mix Optimization Software Provides More Information with Each "What If" Forecast and Improves Speed, Usability and Collaboration

CINCINNATI, May 24, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- ThinkVine, a marketing mix optimization software company, today announced a new version of its award-winning SaaS solution for marketers wanting to achieve the best return on their marketing spend and establish a more efficient and effective planning process. The enhancements are designed to give marketers better decision-making information, faster response times, and improved usability and collaboration.

"Marketers are feeling the pressure from the marketplace and management to show how marketing budgets make a difference in terms of achieving business goals," said Damon Ragusa, ThinkVine's founder and chief strategy officer.  "Top executives want to know what was the return on the marketing they've done and what results they can achieve if they make smart changes to how they allocate that budget. In this new version, we are addressing their demand for solutions that provide information that enables them to quickly respond to market changes easily and make changes to improve results."

The product enhancements focus around four key areas:

• Customizable reporting features provide better forecasts and better decision-making information with each "What If" planning scenario the customer runs. Each forecast can provide valuable information about marketing spending levels, tactics and timing across consumer groups, products, channels and geographies.
• Improved engine performance of the underlying ThinkAhead Technology for faster speed to insight.  For each "What If" scenario, the engine performs hundreds of thousands of calculations, to take consumer demographics, media consumption habits and purchasing behavior, as well as many market factors, into consideration. In this version, runs take 15 percent less time, enabling marketers to employ a more agile and objective planning process, and to quickly access granular, forward-looking information with every forecast.
• Advanced group-level security for more efficient collaborative planning among agencies and in-house marketing teams and to enable people to establish "sandboxes" to simulate consumer response to alternative marketing plans and review them before sharing them with others.
• As part of an ongoing initiative, improvements to the interface have been made for ease-of-use and efficient workflows for technical and non-technical marketers.

"Marketers are in a tough spot these days," Ragusa said.  "Budgets are tight and demands are high.  They have to be smarter, more nimble and deliver better results.  We can help them do that.  No one else provides marketers with the rich info with every 'what if' scenario and no one else is supporting an agile, objective process the way we are.  We have a better way, and this version of our Marketing Mix Optimization software can help marketers get out of that tough spot."

SOURCE ThinkVine