With the Bedrock Free Trial Powered by Nielsen, we introduced something entirely new to the CPG ecosystem: a fully functional SaaS (software-as-a-service) trial of the Bedrock Analytics insights platform, with a bonafide, full-featured Nielsen dataset. But what does that mean for CPGs who want to give Bedrock a spin? Here are some Frequently Asked Questions…  

Nielsen is the world’s largest provider of CPG scan data. As a Nielsen Connect Partner, Bedrock and Nielsen have arranged to offer Bedrock Free Trial users a sample set of data from the Nielsen archive — a full dataset for thousands of brands across 50 key categories in the US, covering a full of year of scan data (end date 12/29/2018) with 64 measures. While it’s older data, covering the calendar year 2018, it is very much a complete dataset.

Nielsen has built a successful global business selling high quality data, so it’s understandable that they would not undermine their own business to provide free current data for 45 days. That said… 

Yes! There is still a lot of value in the dataset that Nielsen has provided for the Bedrock Trial, even though it’s not the most up to date. (And we’d be happy to connect you with a friendly Nielsen rep if you’d like to explore your options around the latest available data)… 

• Understand Segmentation. Nielsen’s segments haven’t changed from 2018 to today, so this data shows you how their hierarchies of subcategories, segments, and subsegments communicate growth or decline of the categories, and the brands therein.
• Understand Available Markets. This dataset contains tons of geographies. Most companies do not have this level of granularity in regions. And even though there’s no retailer specific data in this set, there are 100+ individual geos! 
• Leverage Historical Trends. Look back at historical trends to see how sales ebb and flow through seasons and holidays, which can help you plan for the future.
• Understand What’s Available. This dataset allows CPGs who don’t buy data — or who only buy snapshots, or who get data from other sources — to get a peek at the depth and breadth of the data that Nielsen offers.
• Perform Market Research. This dataset is also great for CPGs that are looking to expand into new categories or new markets, and want to get a sense of what’s available out there.

Ultimately, the purpose of this dataset is simply to allow users to get the full Bedrock experience in the context of data from their own, or similar, categories and brands. It may not be the latest data, but there are still a lot of nuggets of wisdom buried within!

The Bedrock Free Trial was set up to allow busy CPG sales and category managers, brand teams and executives the opportunity to try the software out for themselves, with a built-in data set that accurately reflects all the measures and parameters available to most CPG data subscribers. 

There are literally dozens of visualizations built into our platform, and tons of great product features to explore. And because this is a full version of the software, as a Trial user you’ll be able to experience the full power of what it can do.

In short, the point of this trial is to show you how easy it is, with the right tool, to extract hidden insights from your CPG data.

Bedrock goes beyond the basics of things like ranking reports and distribution comparisons — though our software does those really well — and digs into the data to…

• Surface insights around opportunities and threats
• Evaluate incremental versus base sales performance across markets and products
• Discover the outliers and anomalies in your data that the human eye can easily miss, but which can have a big impact on your bottom line
• Seamlessly export to PowerPoint

…and a lot more!

Getting started is easy! Reach out to sales@bedrockanalytics.com to request a free trial.

The Category and Brand fields of the signup form are particularly important. They determine what your Trial database contains. 

First, select Category. We’ve got 50 key categories from Nielsen in the system, and they cover a good portion of the industry. If you do not see your Category, just go ahead and pick one that’s similar to yours, or another Category that you’re interested in.

Once you’ve selected a Category, the list of available Brands within that category will appear in the Brand drop-down menu. If you don’t see your Brand in the list, you can select a competitor’s Brand, a different Brand entirely, or you can choose Private Label, which will allow you to use the system as a generic Brand.

There are in-app tutorials to guide you through the use of the platform, so we’re with you every step of the way. And of course, you can always reach out to us via email from within the software if you need additional assistance, or have any questions.