Business Intelligence Companies & Consultants in Evanston, IL

Big Chalk is an analytics and insights consultancy headquartered in Evanston, Illinois. It works primarily with consumer packaged goods manufacturers, retailers and media organizations. The firm pairs people who understand shoppers and marketing with data scientists and engineers. It positions itself as a partner that helps brand teams turn large, fragmented data sets into decisions about growth, spending and pricing. Its clients range from young emerging brands to Fortune 1000 enterprises.

Business Intelligence and analytics services

For buyers focused on reporting and visualization, Big Chalk builds bespoke dashboards. These cover areas such as forecasts driven by consumption data, category and brand reviews, and tools that surface untapped opportunities, often with scenario modeling layered in. Beyond dashboards, its portfolio spans a wider set of analytical disciplines:

• CPG consulting covering strategic planning, data science and data engineering
• Marketing effectiveness work, including optimizing the marketing mix and measuring media returns
• Brand health tracking and trade investment analysis
• Pricing and promotion planning
• Custom research such as concept testing, product testing and conjoint studies
• Flexible staffing with analysts, data engineers, data scientists and BI specialists

Products and toolkits

Two packaged offerings sit alongside the consulting work. Pricing Strategy on Demand is built on the NorthLight Gazelle platform. It uses AI-driven modeling to produce pricing and promotion insights at the channel and individual account level. Models can be rebuilt as conditions shift, and scenario planning lets clients generate account plans quickly.

The Emerging Brands Launch and Growth Toolkit is aimed at smaller companies trying to win retail distribution. It supplies consumer evidence that strengthens a sell-in pitch to buyers who guard shelf space carefully, because very few new launches last past their second year.

How the firm engages

Big Chalk describes its method as a 360° intelligence approach. Work begins by clarifying a client's goals and obstacles. The team then folds in broader economic trends and a review of the competitive landscape. From there it targets the specific questions leadership needs answered, and the end product is framed as a set of growth opportunities.

Engagements can be scoped as traditional consulting projects or as flexible resourcing. This lets clients expand or reduce analytical capacity to match their own schedules and priorities, while the firm absorbs much of the administrative burden. The team says it functions as an extension of the client's staff and emphasizes ongoing dialogue throughout a project.

Team and background

The company is led by CEO and co-founder Sean Ogar and co-founder Kris Walker. Other leaders cover innovation (Kelly Bernazza-Hall), sales and marketing effectiveness (Rick Miller), people (John Parkins) and emerging brands (Rod Brown). The leadership group cites more than two centuries of combined experience in analytics and insights.

Big Chalk also draws on a network of over 1,500 consultants spanning strategy, analytics, data science and engineering, which allows it to fill specialized roles on demand. The firm handles a wide mix of inputs, from syndicated and retailer data to first-party, media, ecommerce and social sources.

For many buyers, Big Chalk stands out for combining CPG domain knowledge with modern machine learning and AI methods. It also publishes original research. Recent reports have tested whether consumer sentiment indices actually predict spending. Others have examined Super Bowl advertising attribution and the marketing value of college sports, including women's programs.

Overview

Cadent Consulting Group is a boutique advisory firm dedicated to the consumer packaged goods (CPG) sector. It has offices in Evanston, Illinois, and Wilton, Connecticut. The firm combines strategy with analytics. It gathers and interprets consumer, shopper, and market data, then turns the findings into plans that manufacturers can take to their retail partners. Buyers comparing business intelligence providers should view Cadent as an insights and analytics consultancy for CPG brands, not as a general-purpose dashboard vendor.

Its clients include consumer goods manufacturers of varying size. It also works with investors such as private equity and venture capital firms, as well as corporate acquirers evaluating CPG deals. Testimonials on its site come from senior sales and executive leaders at large CPG manufacturers. Its work spans grocery, mass merchandisers, club stores, and convenience outlets.

Services

Cadent organizes its offering into six practice areas:

• Consumer and shopper insights: custom path-to-purchase studies, segmentation, key driver analysis, category decision trees, attitudes and usage research, conjoint studies, and product testing for innovation
• Revenue growth management: analytically grounded strategies for growing revenue, adjusted to each client's realities
• Category leadership and growth strategy: category selling narratives for retailers, plus guidance on assortment, pricing, shelf layout, merchandising, and route-to-market planning
• Commercial due diligence: market trend assessment, opportunity sizing, growth driver quantification, and post-deal value creation plans
• Operations and logistics planning: cross-functional work linking supply chain, sales, and finance to reduce cost to serve
• Organizational design: planning and implementing enterprise-wide change at CPG companies

Cadent also markets a set of proprietary CPG solutions named easyOPT, RapidQuery, PriceSiGHT, PromoOPT, SEGRiTE, and QualiQ. The pages reviewed list these tools by name but do not explain what each one does. Prospective buyers should ask the firm how they fit specific analytics needs.

How Cadent Works

The firm scopes each engagement around the question a client most needs answered. It pairs thorough research with recommendations meant to be carried out with retailers. Cadent holds that data has value only when it prompts action, so its deliverables are built for use by sales and category teams.

In category projects, for example, it creates customizable retailer tools and trains client sales staff to use them, so ownership stays inside the organization. It co-creates outputs with client teams in marketing, finance, sales, supply chain, and category management.

Published case studies show this approach in practice. For a snack bar maker, custom shopper research uncovered purchase barriers and influences. The findings shaped new product formats, packaging messages, and in-store trial ideas, which were shared with major US retailers. For a flavor and ingredients company, a category platform and sales training contributed to notable distribution gains in the first year. For a better-for-you dessert brand, Cadent built growth scenarios and a valuation that supported a new funding round.

What Sets Cadent Apart

Cadent cites three strengths: its team's operating leadership background, its research and analytics capabilities, and a wide network of industry contacts. The firm also publishes industry studies, including recent reports on health-conscious shoppers, marketing spending, and changing shopper behavior. For CPG companies and investors that want intelligence grounded in consumer and retail realities, Cadent is a focused specialist alternative to broader analytics firms.

ZS Associates is a consulting and technology company headquartered in Evanston, Illinois. It helps organizations make better use of their data, analytics and artificial intelligence. Andy Zoltners and Prabha Sinha founded the firm in 1983. Today it has a workforce of more than 15,000 and over 40 offices in North America, South America, Europe and Asia.

ZS reports more than 1,700 clients in over 170 countries. This makes it a fit for large enterprises that want analytics delivered at a global scale.

What ZS offers

ZS combines advisory work with its own software. Its consultants help clients decide on strategy and choose use cases. They then build, deploy and scale the resulting solutions across the business. Along the way, ZS works on the supporting data, governance, technology and talent. Its stated aim is to turn analysis into concrete decisions and growth. For buyers comparing Business Intelligence vendors, this means one partner can cover both the analytics strategy and the tools that carry it out.

• AI and analytics consulting
• Customer analytics and AI-driven marketing personalization
• Data platforms and real-world data/evidence solutions
• Commercial model modernization
• Machine learning for fraud detection
• Generative AI analysis of customer sentiment

Products and platforms

ZS sells proprietary products alongside its services. ZAIDYN is a modular, AI-ready platform for life sciences. It helps teams connect their data, plan product launches and run digital engagement. Within it, the ZAIDYN Medical Affairs Hub supports medical strategy and decision-making while keeping to regulatory requirements. ZS Atlas Intelligence uses generative AI to analyze customer feedback such as reviews.

Personalize.AI uses predictive machine learning and multivariate testing to pick offers, messages and pricing for each customer. ZS also works with a network of technology partners and offers ready-made digital accelerators.

Industries and results

ZS has deep expertise in pharmaceuticals and life sciences. It also serves consumer goods and retail, financial services, healthcare, technology and telecommunications, and travel and hospitality. Published examples include the following:

• A national quick-service restaurant chain used Personalize.AI and reports more than $100 million in added revenue and about four times its marketing return.
• A drug maker used machine learning to flag over 70 pharmacies linked to $25 million in co-pay card fraud.
• A commercial bakery reworked its brand strategy in weeks using Atlas Intelligence.
• Takeda Oncology worked with ZS on an AI sales application.

Recognition

ZS was named a Leader in the Forrester Wave for Customer Analytics Service Providers (Q2 2025). It was also a Leader in several 2025 and 2026 IDC MarketScape assessments covering life sciences data platforms, consulting and HCP engagement. Forbes has listed it among America's Best Management Consulting Firms for ten straight years.

EcoVadis gave it a Platinum sustainability rating, and it holds Great Place to Work certification in several countries. The firm says three principles guide its work: treating people well, getting the work right and acting ethically.