Excel

No more Excel for category management

In today's landscape, where software and AI increasingly work for us, enormous opportunities exist to make category management simpler and more effective.

Data crunching

From data crunching to strategic impact

The volume of data you handle as a category manager keeps growing; retailer demands are rising and available time for analysis keeps shrinking.

Merging data, correcting errors, and enriching information still consumes a significant portion of your workweek. Conversations with category managers reveal this ranges between 25% and 80% of their workload. Time you'd rather spend on in-depth analysis, strategic recommendations, and discovering new opportunities.

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Combine data

Eat, sleep, crunch, repeat

Most category managers start their analysis by exporting data from multiple systems. Market data from Nielsen or Circana; POS data from SIS (Albert Heijn) or 7EVEN (Jumbo); pricing and promo data from IPV or Superscanner; ex-factory data from internal databases.

Next comes processing this information, typically in Excel: several standard reports and perhaps additional pivot tables to answer deeper questions.

The truly unique insights come from combining these sources. But data from different sources rarely aligns seamlessly. Reference numbers like EAN codes aren't always consistent and manual verification is needed to correct errors.

Products must be linked and enriched with additional information that isn't available by default. And when new products launch, this process starts all over again. It's a time-consuming task that's not only frustrating but also limits how many analyses you can perform.

User Control

Values

Saved 1 FTE

Unique insights

More deals won

Up to 95% Accuracy

Captain's forecasting models proven up to 95% accuracy in predicting promotional outcomes

Profit impact up to 4%

Improve margins by up to 4% through smarter promotional planning

Reduce waste

Cut promotional overstock and waste by up to 20%

Convincing

Captain empowers category managers to lead with confidence always backed by clear, data-driven insights.

Attractive

From dashboards to visuals, every Captain interface is designed to be intuitive, elegant, and ready to share.

Smart

We use AI and automation to simplify complexity and speed up your workflow.

Changing category management

Less manual work, more impact

Fortunately, this doesn't have to be the case anymore. Automation offers a solution that lets you skip all these steps.

By leveraging APIs and intelligent import scripts, data is pulled directly from different sources. This not only saves time but also prevents human errors.

Additionally, AI models enable automatic data harmonization, error correction, and even enrichment with relevant labels and product information. This means your datasets are always clean and consistent, ready for use the moment you need them.

This delivers not just time savings, but new possibilities. You can create more efficient and deeper analyses, enabling you to share more insights with customers. Combining datasets reveals insights that were previously much harder to reach.

You have more capacity to focus on strategy and can even deploy predictive AI models. Think of models that calculate price elasticity, predict promotional impact, or determine optimal assortment. These insights give you the tools to advise customers even better and grow your categories further.

What does this mean for you?

Bottom line: less manual work means more focus on what truly matters. Ask yourself: what would automating this process mean for you? How much time would you gain? How much more impact could you create?

These are the questions that drive us. Our goal is to make your life easier, so you can maximize the value from your data. We help you skip manual steps, giving you constant overview, faster action, and immediate readiness.

With Captain, we give trade marketeers and category managers the tools to work smarter, faster, and with more confidence.

You are the captain. This is your story!