Leveraging Regulatory Pesticide Data for Business Advantage

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.
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
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
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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
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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.
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