• Hierarchical Pick Lists. Geographies and products are organized in a hierarchy that is reflective of how you do your business making AWS a natural fit to your organization's existing business process.
• Attribute Searching. AWS lets you search for data based upon its attributes or characteristics. Users can easily locate items of a particular size, style, flavor, etc. and create a custom list or aggregation that is dynamically updated with each future run.
• User-defined calculations and aggregations. AWS allows users to create custom aggregations of geographies, products, or time periods on the fly. Users can also customize calculations to create a share of a particular manufacturer or segment of interest.
• Unique features. Other features include sorting, limiting, ranking, exception criteria and more to allow users to customize a report to contain specific, actionable information.

LINQ (Large Interactive Network Query)

Data sets have expanded exponentially from just a few years ago. It is now common for a marketing database to contain millions of records and several years of data. Users have become overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data available to them. Decision makers are ever challenged to find the quickest and easiest way to mine this vast data and produce actionable analytics.

The LINQ (Large Interactive Network Query) Add-on is a feature for specifically configured databases accessible through Analyst Workstation. LINQ queries are designed to access extremely large store level databases. Data that meets the criteria in the LINQ filter dialog is extracted from the database and returned to AWS to produce reports showing volumetric data and/or a store profile. The filters can be finely tuned to target a population or identify exceptions and opportunities.

With little effort, LINQ enables users to answer critical business questions such as:

• How many stores exist where Brand A has a share greater than 25 and where our front-end display is present?
• How many convenience stores in the Northwest are showing a decrease in my brand's share by 2 or more points? Of these stores, which ones show an increase in my competitor's share?
• How many stores are stocking my new brand? Which stores are not? What competitive brands do they have in distribution?

LINQ provides counts and/or lists of identified items that satisfy the specified criteria. In addition, the lists can contain any of the associated store attribute information stored on the database such as store name and address, market and trade class identifiers, trade program participation level, call frequency, demographics, etc. The detailed lists can be printed or exported to Excel or other statistical packages for detailed analysis.

Use LINQ to:

• analyze performance at the store level
• track and analyze promotion programs
• identify competitive activity
• develop market or account level programs

Our Optimized OLAP Database Gets Your Data FAST

Analyst Workstation employs OMNI, MSA's proprietary OLAP database developed and fine-tuned over a twenty-year period. OMNI specializes and excels in handling large amounts of time series data for market analysis. OMNI has a proven track record with syndicated third-party data providers such as AC Nielsen and IRI, as well as our client's internal sales and marketing data and MSA's Reseller Information Systems data.