Readers' Choice Survey 2016

CGT’s readers have again spoken, shining a spotlight on the consumer goods industry’s preferred technology solution and service providers spanning 15 different categories. Now in its 16th year, the survey covers the vast landscape of investment opportunities available for growth-hungry consumer goods organizations — from ERP to Digital Commerce and everything in between.

The resulting short lists, and accompanying commentary from industry experts and analysts, guide business and IT decision makers in their quest to find innovative technology/service providers that deliver a competitive edge in the intense game for consumer loyalty.

Categories:

• Business Intelligence
• Consulting
• Customer Experience Management
• Customer Relationship Management
• Demand Data Analytics
• Digital Commerce
• Enterprise Resource Planning
• Mobility
• New Product Development & Introduction
• Outsourcing
• Product Information Management
• Retail Execution
• Supply Chain Execution
• Supply Chain Planning
• Trade Promotion Management
• Editor's Picks

Here is a breakdown of the survey’s methodology:

The Top Providers list for each category showcases the 10 companies (or five companies in some cases) that received the best overall scores for the solutions and/or services that they offer to consumer goods organizations. Appearing in alphabetical order, these short lists were determined by survey responses from executives and employees that work with these tools daily.

To ensure the integrity of the survey, only consumer goods executives are eligible to vote, and they can only take the survey once. We have internal checks in place to detect fraudulent voting activity. We asked each respondent to only record votes in categories that match his or her area of expertise, whether that be supply chain, product development, sales and marketing or general IT.

In each relevant category, they were asked to identify the solution or services provider whose tools or services they currently use. They were then asked to rank their satisfaction level using that chosen provider on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being “extremely dissatisfied” and 5 being “extremely satisfied”). A company’s total score is computed by multiplying the number of votes it received in a category by its average user satisfaction rating in that same category.
In addition to the list of Top Providers in each category, CGT highlights three companies that received special honors from readers:

Best in Category: This recognition identifies the one company that received the highest total score in its category.

Customer Experience Leader: This recognition identifies the one company that received the highest average user satisfaction rating in a category, regardless of the number of votes.

SMB Market Leader: This recognition identifies the company that received the highest total score from respondents with revenue equal to or less than $1 billion in a category.

In addition, a measure titled “Category Customer Satisfaction” tabulates the user satisfaction rating for an entire category by averaging out the user satisfaction ratings of each company on the list. This metric is a strong indication of the user community’s satisfaction with the solutions offered today.

Plus, check out the Editors’ Picks section to learn about 20 more technology and services organizations that your company should explore in 2016 for unique or specialized projects.

Survey Demographics

Company size by annual revenue:

• 56%: Greater than $1 billion
• 41%: Less than $1 billion

Area of expertise:

• 20%: Supply chain
• 41%: Sales and marketing
• 9%: Product development
• 30%: General IT/All of the above