White Paper Leveraging Regulatory Pesticide Data for Business Advantage Leveraging Regulatory Pesticide Data for Business Advantage Overview EPA databases and databases maintained by state departments of agriculture house a wealth of detailed information regarding every pesticide product available in the United States. Continuously updated, they are sources of information regarding industry trends as well as containing facts about products on the market at any point in time. These databases are a potential goldmine of useful intelligence for every company that competes in the U.S. pesticide products marketplace. The functions that can use their information span the entire chemical enterprise, from regulatory to sales and marketing to product development. The key to turning that information into useful intelligence for those functions is to query those databases in a way that answers the questions behind key business and product decisions. That’s why Kelly Registration Systems created Knowtify, the regulatory data mining tool for pesticide professionals. A Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution accessible through web browsers 24/7 from any location, Knowtify gives subscribers the ability to conduct searches of virtually any aspect of regulated pesticide products, and to be notified immediately of any new information regarding products or active ingredients. Knowtify is sufficiently flexible to provide answers to virtually any pesticide question. The uses to which Knowtify can be put, and the data it can generate to help influence business decisions, are limited only by the imagination. Knowtify Uses Across Job Functions Because Knowtify directly front-ends EPA and state databases, the information it presents is timely and unlimited in scope. Its usage can vary greatly throughout a typical pesticide chemical company:  Regulatory officers use Knowtify to quickly review their company’s data to ensure EPA records are accurate and complete, especially when purchasing another company or transferring products. Copyright © 2012 Kelly Products, Inc. 2  Product developers use Knowtify as a research tool, as when accounting for all tests successfully passed by a technical chemical under consideration.  Brand managers use Knowtify to keep apprised of new approvals for specific pesticides relative to their products, and to locate opportunities to expand labels based on other products or new MRID submissions.  Sales professionals use Knowtify to better understand their customers’ product portfolios and to identify new opportunities to sub-register products.  Customer service centers use Knowtify to support rapid, informed responses to customer questions regarding specific products, especially sub-registered products. Many companies give some or all of these job functions direct access to Knowtify for research and notifications as needed. Others prefer to manage Knowtify through a gatekeeper function such as the regulatory office, which fields queries from other functions. In either case, Knowtify makes information available and ready to help support fully informed business decisions. The operational and competitive advantages Knowtify affords can make a very significant impact on any pesticide company’s market position, whether it’s an established provider with scores of products or a smaller operation seeking to rapidly expand its presence. The following use cases are actual examples of Kelly Registration Systems customers putting Knowtify to inventive use. Use Case 1: Using Customer Intelligence to Strengthen Relationships One company with thousands of sub-registered products adopted Knowtify to address difficulties in tracking the activities and status of licensees. Knowtify immediately satisfied the need for information gathering. When the sales department became aware of its capabilities, Knowtify took on a larger role relative to customer relationship management. Each salesperson now uses Knowtify to stay on top of companies that sub-register products within sales territories, with automatic notifications on key customers keeping them apprised of trends. Before making customer rounds, a salesperson can easily export addresses and maps to customer locations, along with information on competitors’ products the customer has sub-registered, enabling better-informed sales calls. The salesperson can also research each customer’s product lines to uncover Copyright © 2012 Kelly Products, Inc. 3 opportunities to educate them about technical chemicals or products they aren’t using that could provide market advantages. Use Case 2: Using Application Intelligence to Extend Product Line Another customer with a limited line of consumer products hired a brand manager who, among other strengths, was well-versed in Knowtify from her previous position. This brand manager used Knowtify to make quick work of researching new MSDS submissions on technical chemicals to uncover product development opportunities. Rather than simply expanding existing product labels, the brand manager used this information to guide the introduction of new consumer products employing the same chemicals for additional, approved applications. Within a year, the company had multiplied their product offerings and was purchased by another company. Use Case 3: Using State Approval Intelligence to Extend Geography Because Knowtify can examine data in different ways in multiple windows – for example, to simultaneously drill down by pests and sites – it simplifies the process of discovering important differences in the EPA stamped labels of seemingly identical products. One Knowtify customer uses this capability to reduce the cost of obtaining state department of agriculture approval for both existing and new products. This customer’s regulatory function used Knowtify to initially identify competitive products identical to the company’s own products from an EPA perspective, and then comparing state approvals for both sets of products. This formed an initial baseline indicating where it would be quick work to gain additional state approvals based on precedent. The company then set automatic notifications to inform it of new approvals for competitive products in additional states, triggering appropriate actions for new state approvals. This practice of letting someone else go first has proven to be highly cost-effective for expanding geographic reach, especially with regard to states with more rigorous approval processes such as New York and California. Putting Regulatory Information to Work for You The uses to which Knowtify can be put, and the data it can generate to help influence business decisions, really are limited only by the imagination. EPA and state agricultural department databases provide all the regulatory data anyone in the U.S. pesticide Copyright © 2012 Kelly Products, Inc. 4 products industry could want; Knowtify provides the data mining capabilities to put that information to use. Customers invariably report that once they adopt Knowtify, they soon find additional uses well beyond those that drove the initial purchase decision. What those uses are can vary among different companies with different missions, but whether the adopting company is a formulator or licensee, and whether the user is in a regulatory, development, marketing, or sales capacity, there are always questions on people’s minds that Knowtify can answer in ways that simply weren’t practical before. To arrange a Knowtify demo, please call Mary Miller, Knowtify Business Development, at (540) 605-0460 or email [email protected]. About Kelly Products Headquartered in Covington, Georgia, holding company Kelly Products, Inc. provides various segments of the chemical and agribusiness industries with essential information and automation solutions. Kelly Products’ business units help leading chemical companies formulate and bring winning products to market quickly; assist departments of agriculture with electronic data capture, data tracking and funds collection for greater efficiency; and support gardening and landscaping interests by providing a wealth of information and assistance that fosters results for homes and businesses. For more information, visit www.kelly-products.com. Kelly Registration Systems, Inc. 10115 Hwy 142 N Covington, GA 30014 Phone: 770-385-0009 Fax: 770-385-0342 Copyright © 2012 Kelly Products, Inc. 5