In the white goods market, great customer experience is probably the only yardstick to measure a brand's success. To be able to service their customers better, improve customer loyalty, and hone their market research, knowing their customers is an imperative.

Also, LG's practice of hiring agents (internal as well as external) to collect customer data from its trade partners was time consuming and highly inaccurate. It would take the company about two weeks to a month to collate data. "We slowly realized that we were spending months in analyzing sales data--not consumer data," says Prakash.

So, in order to give its customers a face and a name, Prakash realized that LG needed to capture the actual sell-out information in real time--with customer data. "We also needed to begin predicting our trade partner's stock to get a better hold of the market situation and to build a viable sales and production strategy," he says.

It's not everyday that a company decides to break from the mold and venture on its own in a direction nobody else has gone. Prakash needed a lot more than guts.