Summit on "Business Experimentation" Draws Senior Executives From Over 25 Fortune 500 Companies

Executives from more than 25 major retailers, banks, consumer goods manufacturers, and restaurant chains including American Greetings, Circuit City, Famous Footwear, Owens Corning, Sprint, Staples, Lowes, Wachovia and Wells Fargo gathered over two days at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in San Francisco, CA to share best practices for institutionalizing a Test & Learn capability.

Testing allows organizations to continue to experiment with programs that might be deemed too risky for down market implementation. By uncovering and understanding factors that improve program value, companies can continue to engage their consumer with innovative ideas, while mitigating risks to the enterprise.

San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) April 22, 2008 -- Executives from more than 25 major retailers, banks, consumer goods manufacturers, and restaurant chains including American Greetings, Circuit City, Famous Footwear, Owens Corning, Sprint, Staples, Lowes, Wachovia and Wells Fargo gathered over two days at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in San Francisco, CA to share best practices for institutionalizing a Test & Learn capability.

Michael Calbert, a member of KKR, provided Tuesday's keynote address, in which he described how testing capabilities like Test & Learn can be a major factor in helping organizations profitably navigate the economic slowdown.

Michael described the importance of testing to marketers. "As the retail market enters the economic slowdown, one of the distinguishing factors between organizations that are thriving and those that are faltering is the ability to make better, fact-based decisions via capabilities like Test & Learn."    

Michael also highlighted the creative benefits of testing. "Testing allows organizations to continue to experiment with programs that might be deemed too risky for down market implementation. By uncovering and understanding factors that improve program value, companies can continue to engage their consumer with innovative ideas, while mitigating risks to the enterprise."

Michael Calbert has been with KKR for eight years and, during that time, has been directly involved with several portfolio companies including Shoppers Drug Mart, Toys 'R' Us, US Foodservice and Dollar General. He heads the Retail industry team and is currently on the board of directors of Toys 'R' Us, U.S. Foodservice and Chairman of the Board of Dollar General.

Corey Yulinsky, Executive Vice President of Strategy and Consumer Insights at Sears Holdings delivered Monday's keynote address, entitled "Making Test & Learn Stick." Corey reviewed his experience leading the implementation of the Test & Learn process across Sears Holdings, and the lessons learned on the journey of making Test & Learn a key component in the development and execution of Sears' strategy.

Emphasizing the criticality of integrating Test & Learn into the core decision-making processes of a company, Corey outlined the process, technology, and cultural changes required for companies to build a fact-based decisioning capability.

Executives participated in over a dozen highly interactive breakout sessions, spanning topics from Test & Learn Collaboration: Operating at the Intersection of CPG/Retail to Understanding Cannibalization Effects in New Site Decisions. Delegates shared best practices and key learnings about how Test & Learn can be most effectively applied across marketing, merchandising, operational and capital expenditure decisions.

Jim Manzi, CEO of Applied Predictive Technologies, described the event as evidence of Test & Learn's increasing applicability and value to organizations in a challenging consumer marketplace. "The conference attendees and speakers discussed the increasing importance of their roles as analysts, influencers and decision-makers. In the wake of the economic downturn, companies across industries are looking to capabilities like Test & Learn to achieve sales and profit growth even in the face of economic headwinds. Successful companies are those that have institutionalized this technology and are using it to improve decision-making across the organization, generating hundreds of millions of dollars in incremental value per year."

About Applied Predictive Technologies
APT is the industry leader in helping large-scale consumer-focused companies institutionalize a world-class Test & Learn capability. Through the combination of APT's proprietary software and capability-building consulting support, APT has helped some of the world's largest and most successful companies achieve significant bottom-line improvement. For more information about Test & Learn call APT at 703-875-7748 or visit http://www.predictivetechnologies.com.

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