ConAgra, Others Pursue ROI from DSR Investments

10/5/2011

Over the past several years, consumer goods (CG) manufacturers have invested significant time and money building out a consumer-driven supply network, the centerpiece of which is the Demand Signal Repository (DSR). Now, the obvious question is “have those investments paid off?”

On Sept. 28, 2011, experts shared their perspectives on the proven DSR benefits, how companies are measuring the results, what companies plan to do next with their DSRs, and best practices around building/growing/sustaining DSRs. Below are some highlights from the web event:

--Brad Hairston, vice president, Consumer Products Industry Practice for Hitachi Consulting, kicked off the web event by going over the survey results of a recent study conducted by Hitachi Consulting and CGT. The survey results revealed a number of insights, including:

The DSR is pervasive and rapidly gaining maturity. Most CG companies, both large and small, have established a DSR capability and plan to expand it.
The DSR is producing good returns, and value recognition comes quickly, in most cases.
Data integration and data quality challenges related to the DSR continue to be prevalent. Those companies who have addressed these challenges head on are seeing the most benefits.

Hairston also offered some best practices for companies starting the DSR journey: “The DSR has a lot of moving parts and if you don’t take care of them properly, you can end up with a functioning DSR. But, you can also have a lot of tedious, manual processes that bog down the flow of information and ultimately discourage use of the DSR. We always urge companies to treat the DSR like you would treat a major data integration or data warehousing project. Just because this involves downstream, point-of-sale data, the data management disciplines remain the same.”

-- Shari Baranowski, manager Customer Service, Supply Chain for ConAgra Foods, next revealed how ConAgra is making the DSR a foundational part of its environment. Baranowski explained how, as part of a pilot, ConAgra approached one of its customer retailers with a plan to drive improvement at the shelf and prove that access to store-level data is what would drive positive results. There were some roadblocks along the way, but in the end Baranowski found out that the successes of the pilot pushed ConAgra to pursue an organization-wide DSR. “We have found that a DSR will give us many more data sources that allow us to really dig into all the puzzle pieces that we identified [as opportunities] — on-shelf management, pricing, promotional compliance, new product introduction, distribution gaps. That DSR was really going to be that glue that helped us get all those puzzle pieces together,” she explained.

To listen to this event in its entirety, click here.

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