MANASSAS, Va., Jan. 6, 2009 -- INSIGHT, Inc., a top international provider of supply chain planning solutions for the world's foremost companies, announces the first and only strategic planning tool that explicitly incorporates both marketing and supply chain strategy and operations, thus enabling companies to develop a corporate strategy focused on the premier goal of executive management -- profit maximization. Jointly developed with Dybvig Consulting, a supply chain consulting organization, INSIGHT Integrated Enterprise Strategy (IES) builds on the functionality of INSIGHT's flagship product, SAILS 21(R), adding sophisticated marketing-oriented analytical features.

"Currently, in most organization, supply chain executives and marketing managers plan independently except for periodic meetings, potentially causing significant impacts on the supply chain, and eventually on customers," said Jeff Karrenbauer, president of INSIGHT. "This is a win/win collaboration for the marketing and supply chain communities. IES directly addresses the principal issue confronting C-level executives today: how to simultaneously balance all corporate resources so as to maximize profitability and return on shareholder equity."

"IES extends the most recent thinking of how to link strategy with execution, as described in Kaplan and Norton's book, 'The Execution Premium,' by simultaneously and optimally solving the three separate steps of Plan Operations: sales forecasts, resource capacity, and dynamic budgets," adds Alan Dybvig, president of Dybvig Consulting. "Competitive advantage, optimal resource allocation, and increased revenues result from clearly defined strategies that are linked to operations."

IES drops the traditional assumption of fixed demand for a given planning scenario, replacing it with marketing campaigns, wherein both the cost and demand impact of proposed marketing strategies take their place alongside supply chain strategies and costs. The solution opportunistically assigns targeted marketing expenditures to those markets, channels, and products with the greatest margin, given available supply chain capacity, thereby increasing demand and maximizing profit. Equally important, especially in times of business turbulence and contraction, the solution can remove, subject to client limits, resources and demand from unprofitable markets, channels, and products, once again increasing overall profit.

IES avoids a common strategic planning mistake associated with silo management-the essentially independent preparation of marketing and supply chain strategies-and goes far beyond the most sophisticated sales and operations planning (S&OP) and Business Intelligence (BI) tools available today.

"The key differentiator is the simultaneous optimization of the supply chain and marketing, taking into account all relevant costs, capacities and service requirements, under the assumption of changeable demand as a function of both marketing response and supply chain capability," adds Jeff Karrenbauer of INSIGHT.

INSIGHT's IES benefits include:

-- Maximizes profit by aligning sales and marketing expenditures with the most profitable forecast available resources can achieve

-- Identifies least and most profitable customers, channels, brands, and products, in any combination

-- Builds demand scenarios and "what-if" analyses

-- Incorporates all corporate operations simultaneously, including procurement, manufacturing, distribution, and marketing

-- Identifies the marketing initiatives, or campaigns (from among many proposals) that should actually be implemented (as well as those that you should not approve) and allocates those budgets to the markets, channels, and products that yield the greatest margin, while simultaneously evaluating the impact on the entire supply chain, from raw material procurement to final customer delivery

-- Explicitly includes procurement costs and capacities, manufacturing costs and capacities, all transportation, warehousing, duty, tax, port handling, and in-transit inventory costs, customer service requirements, and marketing costs and budget limits

-- Identifies the optimal set of locations: suppliers, manufacturing, distribution centers, ports, cross-docks, and so on

-- Develops a strategic sourcing plan in the context of the entire supply chain, not in isolation. In the process, it rigorously evaluates global outsourcing and other "make or buy" decisions

-- Identifies where capital should be allocated, both short and long term

-- Identifies vulnerabilities in the supply chain and suggests mitigating strategies

INSIGHT IES, which can run on a laptop, uses a powerful mathematical optimization engine and comes equipped with a host of support databases. It can tap into detailed corporate business systems and optimize strategic planning anywhere in the world. Exceptionally easy to use, it is the evolutionary result of continuous research, development and collaboration over many decades of use by a significant percentage of the Fortune 500.

About Insight, Inc.

INSIGHT provides optimization-based supply chain design software and consulting services developed specifically to meet the dynamic business challenges of globalization, disruptions, and mergers/acquisitions prevalent in today's business environment. Founded by supply chain and logistics experts in 1978 with the goal of using world-class technology to add intelligence to decision making, INSIGHT solves the supply chain management issues of the world's foremost companies, including Abbott Laboratories, BASF, Clorox, ExxonMobil, Goodyear, GE, Kellogg, Nestle, PepsiCo, Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, Toyota, and Unilever.

SAILS, INSIGHT's award-winning flagship product, can accurately represent a company's current business practices, from raw materials sourcing to capacity planning through delivery to the end customer. The X-System(R), a proprietary optimization engine, powers a family of planning and scheduling solutions, from the design of a global supply chains to crew scheduling, troop deployments, and transportation procurement. In addition, INSIGHT provides optimization components, partnering with third party software providers to deliver best-of-breed solutions. Our software and services help design optimal supply chain networks that minimize costs and free up capital, streamline operations, maximize profits, and increase customer service levels. For more information, please visit us on the Web at http://www.insight-mss.com.