Kantar Retail announced it is working with Microsoft to help consumer goods companies drive transformational programs and achieve superior sales performance. Customers will benefit from Kantar Retail’s industry expertise and recognised best-in-class solutions, and the Microsoft Azure cloud platform.

The two partners are committed to accelerating digital and business transformation in the industry by providing manufacturers with a powerful platform that leverages the strengths of both companies and benefits from billions of dollars of ongoing investment.

As Kantar Retail brings its technology assets, proprietary retail insights, industry best practices and change management capabilities together under its new sales performance platform, the company will take full advantage of the Azure cloud platform to deliver secure, powerful and scalable solutions. Azure will provide the analytical power to fuel Kantar’s predictive intelligence along with robustness in data processing, to grant platform customers the speediness and power necessary to handle big data.

The sales performance platform helps consumer goods manufacturers to achieve more revenues and profit with less cost through solutions that deliver optimal go-to-market approach and bridge the gap between business planning and execution. “We wanted to pair our unrivalled set of capabilities and industry leading solutions with the Microsoft Azure cloud platform that equally offers leading capabilities in the market,” confirms David Morton, managing director of sales & shopper technology at Kantar Retail. “Together, we will provide our customers with a unique platform to help them empower their teams, engage with their retail partners, strengthen their brands and win at the shelf more effectively and efficiently across the globe.”

Colin Wright, Microsoft global solutions director at Microsoft Corp., adds, “It is paramount for Microsoft to deliver strong industry-specific solutions that can help our customers to innovate and succeed in this mobile-first, cloud-first world. Kantar Retail sales performance platform offers one of the most comprehensive and advanced solutions to empower sales, category management and field sales organizations to achieve more, and we are pleased to work with them in support of our CPG customers.”