Review & Outlook 2015: Cross-Functional/IT
John Beckett
CTO and Founder
Retail Velocity
Only 30 years ago, consumer packaged goods (CPG) success was measured by what companies shipped into their retail channels. Business was transacted on paper, replenished by key code, tracked monthly, shipped to retailer warehouses and sold in stores. Today, CPG companies and retailers share visibility to every product at every store every day. EDI and portals replaced paper, barcodes replaced key codes, daily reporting replaced monthly, retail shelves are monitored by computer and shoppers check themselves out in the stores and online.
A multitude of data sources is arriving so much faster and richer that CPG companies are not only drowning in it, but struggling to find useful meaning and direction from the information inside it. I foresee consolidation of information within the silos of enterprises in order to mine trends, causes and actions.
Manufacturing and logistics will incorporate downstream information to improve forecasts and inventory, data science will evolve to derive causal factors and direction and cross-functional processes will streamline sales and distribution channels. It will culminate in each enterprise’s management measuring financial success based on consumer demand instead of invoiced shipments.
Tony Bender
VP and CIO
Energizer Holdings Inc.
2015 is shaping up to be a year of continued improvement for the U.S. consumer. Oil prices have declined, gas prices have fallen, U.S. labor markets are improving, wages are increasing and unemployment is falling, and the U.S. dollar has strengthened. All of this translates into more discretionary income for consumers, which bodes well for many industry categories.
Expect more strategic partnerships and consolidation within the industry this year, including mergers, acquisitions and divestitures. Several consumer products (CP) companies are separating into two or more new corporate entities to increase shareholder value. The strengthening U.S. dollar provides attractive pricing for U.S. multi-nationals to acquire new brands abroad. Also, many global U.S.-based companies continue to have cash trapped offshore, to avoid U.S. taxation, which will increasingly be used to buy brands abroad. CP companies are always searching for profitable growth, particularly in developing and emerging markets.
Look for an improving, but challenging environment this year. Given all of the industry dynamics, I anticipate major changes to the CP industry landscape during 2015!
Doug Caywood
WW Industry Director, Consumer Goods
Microsoft
Does it seem that every process, every product, and every service is being digitally transformed? They are, and while this creates tremendous risk, it is also creating tremendous opportunity. There are two critical business areas consumer goods (CG) companies should pursue to transform themselves:
How will you transform your business and help change the course of the industry to create the most engaging customer experiences? The future of CG is unfolding today, led by innovative leadership, and amazing new digital capabilities.
Matthew Cook
Director Business Solutions
Danone N.A. — Operations
The story for CG companies will continue to play out at that ‘Single Moment of Truth’ inside the retail store, and this is where companies need to continue to invest. The tools and the point-of-sale (POS) and warehouse data are not expensive and experimentation should be encouraged.
The challenge, however, is what to do with the data and the findings gained? Start with your own products and determine metrics against which you want to measure retail performance, such as in-stock rates, percent distribution in the store network, velocity, average days of supply in the warehouse, and any irregular peaks or valleys in inventory. You can also measure promotion and merchandising effectiveness.
From an IT standpoint, you need three things: 1) a place to put the data, and ETL tools to get it there from transactional systems; 2) a translation and user interface tool to build your analytics (many to choose from); and 3) some way to “govern” the data how each data element will be defined and how it will be used in analytics.
Keep in mind that setting up POS analytics is a means, not an end. But what gets measured usually gets managed, and that is where there are true opportunities.
Jeff DeSandre
CPG IT Professional
Home Care Products Company
In the current business climate, we tend to latch onto popular phrases like big data. We discuss them profusely as it is the appropriate thing to do. However, in reality how many people can truly define the term big data and, more importantly, have embraced the concept to add value to their organization?
Big data is not a new concept; certain industries have been dealing with large volumes of data for years. Data volume is just one component of a sound analytics strategy. This strategy needs to include the following components:
Jonathan P. Feeney, CFA
Principal
Athlos Research
Invest in big data — especially a data management platform (DMP). Consumers drown marketers in trillions of transactions, surfing habits and social media. CG companies and retailers spent the 2000s building up the tools to gather it, but the disappointing volumes in pockets of CPG, especially in packaged food, show the new data isn’t driving new sales. Why?
There are a few possible reasons, after all, middle class consumers have had it rough since 2008. Low-cost digital media has given unprecedented oxygen to ingredient and health fads more readily addressed by smaller, focused companies. It’s also likely that CG companies have been complacent. There are signs this is changing for the better.
For example, Kraft did well to migrate its Bunny Cake recipe from printouts in the kitchen utility drawer to the kraftrecipes.com site – but in 2014 Kraft used its DMP to advertise directly. The result? In April it saw a return on ad spending 4x that of any other campaign tactic and a 23 percent lift in sales.
Today, consumers get and give a lot more data. CG companies need rapid, decisive responses to optimize their sales.
Michael JP Forhez
Practice Director, Consumer Markets
Perficient
The era of the connected consumer has arrived. Most leaders now recognize that improving the maturity of information management is not just a corporate requirement, but a strategic necessity.
Creating and sustaining an Enterprise Information Management strategy (EIM) requires a comprehensive appraisal of what’s communicated both within the business, between trading partners and to the consumer. Here are eight questions worth considering:
Mike Gamage
Director Strategic Pricing and Customer Management Solutions
Starbucks Coffee Company
2015 will likely continue to see a transformation in supply chain as retailers attempt to take advantage of online sales to support their brick-and-mortar operations. CPG manufacturers will see an increase in retailers looking for them to fulfill online orders via a separate supply chain operation.
CPG manufacturers continue to try and leverage technology to impact shelf presence and speed to shelf for new items. Manufacturers that build the capability in house will be a substantial lead above those using multiple third parties or rely on brokers to support this area. Building continued direct links with consumers bypassing retailers’ loyalty cards will build a better understanding and direct link from the brand to the consumers.
Continued shifts toward instant consumable products with ease of use, and perceived health benefits will drive consumer purchases. Pricing will begin to be available for those manufacturers that can leverage these two areas in truly innovative products and abandon the trend of line extensions.
Manufacturers’ continued use and building of demand signal repositories (DSR) will create a key difference for companies as they are able to harness large amounts of disparate data. Building off the knowledge gained from this data pricing, assortment and direct connections to consumers, will shift the power away from retailers and back to the manufacturer.
Paul J. Hardy?
Director — Emerging Markets, Global Markets
ConAgra Foods
What excites me about emerging markets is the opportunity to shape a consumer behavior… to invest in an idea that has not been tested and adapt to the learnings that come from taking a chance. At the core of this task in my organization is filtering through an ocean of internal noise that comes from tapping into systems and processes designed to support a large scale U.S. Domestic business. I wake up every day reminding myself to keep my eyes on the horizon… mainly driven by my belief in where we are going, but partly to avoid getting seasick along the way!
Joel Hopper
ITS Business Partner
Kimberly-Clark Corp.
Regardless of the technology creating the latest buzzwords there remains a need to keep first and foremost the pressing business problem as the center of focus. In recent years we’ve witnessed another wave of marketing blitzes and over hype of the latest technical advances, specifically those related to big data, data discovery and visualization. With the pressure on businesses to respond faster with greater insights, it can be tempting to make technology the center of focus with the people and process aspects of the business problem taking a backseat.
IT can perhaps deliver the greatest value by ensuring priorities maintain the balance between people, process and technology with proven problem solving techniques against clearly defined business cases.
Pete Hyman
VP and GM Consumer Industries
HP Enterprise Services
New technologies are remaking the CP world — and changing how IT groups must relate to the larger CPG business. In years past, most CPG firms would consolidate their IT solutions and delivery from enterprise IT groups. Traditional IT models consisted of large-scale back office operations, from which big-package IT solutions were delivered directly to meet virtually every business and functional need. That model worked for decades, providing aggregated scale, cost savings, security, and other advantages.
But IT is changing and CPG companies need to adjust: competition is tougher, margins thinner, and time-to-market shorter. Traditional standardized, centralized solutions still get the job done, but many CPG leaders now seek more powerful and agile solutions that leverage analytics to deliver higher value to the business.
IT leaders can now deliver an impressive variety of rich, lightweight solutions — from cloud delivery and as-a-service options to new security, data management, and analytic systems. Most CIOs have decades of strength and experience delivering technology-based solutions. Now they must help the CPG business functions utilize IT, without the full weight of enterprise IT.
Kimberly Knickle
Practice Director
IDC Manufacturing Insights
Digital transformation is the priority for 2015. Many CG companies have already achieved moderate success with new technologies — including mobile applications, mobile devices, social tools, cloud, big data and analytics, and even IoT. This year, more companies will focus on combining newer technologies to support a business purpose, effectively a digital transformation. The focus is less on technology and more on supporting business requirements or business “purpose.”
Easier said than done to achieve a digital transformation. IDC estimates that 61 percent of technology spend is influenced or directly spent by lines of business. IT and business leadership must be in sync to determine which technologies to invest in when and why, for what purpose. For CG, much of the purpose behind digital transformation is coming from the CMO; IDC estimates that marketing organizations will spend 50 percent of their program budget on digital initiatives by 2016 (across all industries).
The most forward thinking companies understand that digital transformation is a continuous process to leverage technology. Success must be defined by business outcomes — for example, higher customer service levels, customer loyalty, and consumer sentiment; the creation of a marketing web and more successful promotions; and faster product introductions and constant innovation.
Gopi Krishnan
General Manager & Global Head — Strategy & Domain Consulting Retail, Consumer Goods & Transportation
Wipro Limited
One of the fascinating battles I see is between retailers and CG companies around customer ownership and brand loyalty. With technology allowing CG companies to directly reach out to their shoppers/buyers/influencers/end-consumers, it is technically now possible to know who your actual customers are, initiate a dialog with them and also keep track of hundreds of thousands of mostly unsolicited spur-of-the-moment social feedback. An example of this is smarter vending machines, which can now report their stock-outs and give tailored options to the shopper.
Retailers on the other hand, see increasing migration of revenue online coupled with falling store footfalls. While trying to retain and reign in the loyal brick-and-mortar customer base, they’ve also responded by creating broader assortments via virtual storefronts on a marketplace model to attract new customer segments. This has resulted in greater focus on private labels.
So, while retailers expand into products space with their own-labels and CG companies expand to the customer space with innovative ways to reach out to the end consumer, I believe that there’s still a significant space for the two to collaborate in retailer categories with specific challenges — where time is short (convenience chains), shopping lists are long/fixed (groceries) and options make decisions harder (electronics).
Alan Lipson
Global Retail Industry Strategist
SAS
The oft-hyped IoT appears to offer endless technological promise to the CPG industry in terms of ways to engage consumers with products, and vice versa. But, like many technologies introduced throughout history, will the reality of the IoT’s benefits outweigh the drawbacks? I think the IoT is different, and here’s why:
Ajith Madhavan
Head Consulting — CPG & Retail industry
IGATE
The digital revolution has already taken the retail world by storm. We believe 2015 will be the defining year for the CPG industry in this space. The focus will be on consumer engagement. We see clients developing more robust ROI models to decide between trade and consumer engagement spends. Internal and external collaboration is coming into sharp focus — there simply is no other way to succeed in this ‘Uberized’ world. Supply chains, promotions or marketing strategies have to be responsive enough to meet the needs of savvy, hyper-connected consumers. The explosion of technology choices is also driving a significant trend in innovation — we see a dramatic uptick in CPG companies’ willingness to commit budgets to try something new and untested. Vendor partners are coming to the party too, with interesting ways to take money out of “keeping the lights on” to spend on innovation. On-shelf availability solutions are being viewed very seriously. Also lining up in front of the CIO — demands from the business for product portfolio optimization, trade program optimization and consumer engagement projects. Big data and analytics is beginning to go beyond consumer data — farm output, commodity prices, weather — all coming together to provide the perfect launch pad of the IoT for the CPG sector.
Christophe Marcant
Vice President Product Strategy
Stibo Systems
The biggest initiative for any CG company in the coming year will be to foster strong collaboration with partners in order to provide a better customer experience and improve profits. Information sharing among retailers and CG manufacturers will become increasingly important, particularly with directives such as EU regulation No 1169. Manufacturers and retailers must now ensure that compliant information is displayed on all product packaging and in online stores. Food and beverage manufacturers must standardize their food labeling and provide even greater clarity to consumers on ingredients, nutrition and allergens.
In order to comply, packaging must be updated, and online retailers must ensure that the information they provide conforms to the regulation and is identical to the product information provided on the manufacturer’s physical packaging. Master Data Management (MDM) and Product Information Management (PIM) systems enable suppliers, manufacturers and retailers to share in the responsibility of creating accurate and reliable master data. Not only do MDM solutions help to maintain compliance, they also help manufacturers to increase customer loyalty and strengthen the digital supply chain by removing the negative “ripple effect” that can occur from poor data integrity.
Michael Marzano
IT Lead — Retail Solutions
Mondelez International
CPG companies are no stranger to big data, analytics, and business intelligence (BI) projects. Efforts around social sharing and collaboration are common as well. A real opportunity lies with the convergence of these endeavors.
The idea is to go beyond analytics and BI reports to encourage colleagues and business partners to engage, share and discuss insights generated from big data. The initiative to create a ‘data curiosity’ mindset benefits innovation and operational efficiencies.
What could this look like? A collaboration platform that allows ease of use from multiple devices will be a key enabler. Integration of BI and reporting systems with a social sharing application will allow metrics and alerts to be openly shared and discussed. But ultimately it will be the combination of people, process, technology and leadership that will create the necessary inquisitive culture.
If you are looking for a model of success consider the evolution of fantasy baseball. Each year additional metrics are created, tracked, and discussed. Technology has enabled the ability to publish, share, and encourage dialogue and debate. CPG companies must create a similar environment where metrics and analytics are not just reported but are discussed, debated, and acted upon.
Bruce Nagle
CEO & Founder
RW3 Technologies
Data is the difference between profit and loss. Companies with the right data repository and reporting technology can track in real time how and where products are selling, performance of sales teams and retail partners, and more. Timely data lets decision makers act quickly and confidently. But historically data has been siloed, throwing up roadblocks.
Barriers to organizing, housing and successfully sharing data within an organization have shrunk. Partners in the industry are simplifying their data files, accelerating new analytical reporting capabilities. Reports and scorecards that were once utilizing three to five data streams are now accessing 15 to 20 streams, depicting the most accurate retail landscape to date. Mobile reporting solutions provide custom dashboards and analytics that the entire organization can use, minimizing IT cost, training, and frustration.
2015 will be the year CPG organizations move toward a single data repository, align their objectives, and capitalize on their opportunities with data they can access, share, and use for the right decisions. Those who have already begun this venture will see an accelerated growth of capabilities moving forward.
Meena Surti Patel
AVP/Lead, Retail & Consumer Goods Consulting
Cognizant
A high priority area of focus in 2015/2016 for CPG companies is to elevate and align around the shopper to rethink and redesign the overall business model. One trend we are clearly seeing is CPG companies working with e-commerce, club, and retailers in greater collaboration to integrate marketing and fulfillment capability on store level assortments, buy online pick up at store and direct home delivery. There are three areas CPG companies need to focus on, and improve, in how they execute:
Vikram Samant
EVP — Solutions & Pre-sales
CIGNEX Datamatics, Inc.
Today’s digitally connected consumer is influenced more by experiences, than brand names. The purchase “moment of truth” occurs online and yet, poor engagement with millennial shoppers in social channels is the No. 1 challenge facing consumer brands. CG enterprises face data integration challenges for meaningful insights that provide better replenishment, targeted promotions, and other business decisions.
CIOs need to focus on “humanizing” brands, building relevant customer engagement and deriving insights from consumer data as well as IoT data. A direct-to-consumer strategy irrespective of distribution approaches focused on providing a human face to the brand and gauging brand sentiment through analytics is key. A scalable “Business Engagement Platform” integrating Customer Engagement, Reputation Management with analytical insights across the value chain, at a reduced Total Cost of Ownership and faster deployment will be a driving force.
An increased open source software adoption due to quick proof of concepts and the stability of enterprise editions especially in systems that help engage with customers, partners, employees and those that provide insight with visualization, have helped significantly lower total cost of ownership, solve business challenges faster, innovate and attract IT talent.
Enterprises that get to the market faster, by evaluating and adopting alternative technologies to harness these interactions and ensuing data, hold the key to success.
Susan Sentell
CEO and President
Gladson
PIM will be a critical cross-functional business priority for CG organizations in 2015. The management of product images and data should no longer exist solely within departmental silos. With significant negative ripple effects caused by inaccurate and incomplete product data, CPG organizations need to establish a single version of the truth for product information.
One way to achieve an authoritative source of product content is by outsourcing the creation, updating and hosting of critical product data to an experienced third-party provider.
Bringing order to the ‘Wild West’ of PIM will pay dividends. From having the most complete and accurate data set for MDM investments, to reducing supply chain costs, to strengthening retailer relationships and ensuring shoppers have up-to-date product images and information, the focus on PIM is critical.
CPG manufacturers that can rely on accurate and robust enterprise-ready product content will be well prepared to capitalize on growth opportunities in this increasingly digital landscape; while diminishing some of the growing pains.
Thierry Soudee
CEO
UpClear
The trends in enterprise software tend to follow the trends of the consumer world... with a 3 to 5 year lag! While we hear about the upcoming wave of wearables and IoT, the enterprise is only now transitioning to the cloud and mobile-accessible systems, finally enjoying associated efficiency gains.
In 2015, CG companies will embrace technology that enhances collaboration, and software that enables quicker and more informed decisions based on ready-to-use data.
To achieve this reality, expect systems to be deployed globally, but with a high degree of market configurability, delivered through the cloud. Expect your sales team to ditch their laptops and go mobile. Expect retailer sales information to become even more granular, with greater frequency, and, most importantly, loaded directly into your sales and trade management solutions. The use of crowd-sourced retail execution data will also emerge.
Legacy systems that lived on dedicated hardware will be replaced by web-based solutions, quick-to-deploy and accessible from anywhere and any device. Emerging markets will catch up rapidly on technology and systems.
Enterprise software is becoming commonplace and the best solutions in 2015 will be cheaper, faster to deploy, and not lock you into long-term contracts.
Paulo Viola
North America CEO
NeoGrid
As supply chains become increasingly global, there are both potential risks and benefits, such as new product introductions, emerging markets and company growth. These factors have made sales & operations planning (S&OP) an even more critical business function in the CG industry. However, as companies grow, many are finding that their enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are unable to handle their S&OP processes.
Yes, it is possible to customize ERP for S&OP. But, in truth, it is a very complex, time-consuming process — ERP systems are intrinsically inflexible and are designed to connect internal business functions. Even once ERP is customized for S&OP, it will inevitably need additional configurations to meet the speed of business, demand trends and corporate changes.
Now is the time to consider decoupling S&OP from ERP systems and explore a cloud-based S&OP solution. With such a solution, companies can enable cross-functional collaboration, allowing both internal and external players to plan using the same demand-driven, real-time data to optimize resources, increase accuracies, boost sales and synchronize their supply chains.
Joe Vitucci
Application Group Manager
Kao USA
Stephen Covey said, “Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent and not enough time on what is important.” In a world where CPG companies amass ever-growing amounts of data from countless sources, systems, and projects, how can we best determine what is most important and where to most effectively spend our time?
Our enterprise program management office, or EPMO, at Kao was initiated in 2014 to begin answering these questions. Its mission is to uncover the projects that will bring the most value and insert them accordingly into an executional queue.
In 2015/2016, Kao is entering an exciting time in my area (IT support for Sales) evaluating initiatives to either update or establish its trade promotion management (TPM), post-event analysis, and sales force automation systems. However, I would be remiss to identify any of these projects or trends in sales as more important than the EPMO process itself. Our most impactful initiative is refining our EPMO to ensure the most important projects bubble to the top. This will allow us to most efficiently use limited resources and funds. Furthermore, as the EPMO grows, so too should the same mindset in how we work within our projects. The companies that can quickly identify what is most important, and then attack that, will position themselves for long-term success.
Glenn Wegryn
Principal
Analytic Impact LLC
Continued emphasis on deriving value from data and building internal capabilities to make better collaborative decisions will be a significant difference-maker in 2015/2016.
As companies continue to grapple with where and how to harness big data (as well as determining its ROI), having the internal capability to analyze data to enable better decisions is where the competitive advantage lies for CG companies. Companies will start to differentiate themselves by hiring or developing resources trained in the arts and sciences of analysis.
These are not your typical IT data jocks — they are business people first, who happen to have the technical chops to define a problem, acquire the right information, analyze the options and present an actionable recommendation. This is gold. And while perhaps not at Midas-level, when coached and guided by the right leadership, I have seen internal analytic organizations return 10x the investment in value delivered.
So what does it take to get started? A Champion: A business leader with ideas on where decision making and insights could make a difference, and has the ability to see it through multiple successes. Because competitive advantage isn’t gained by one project – it builds on itself to a point where analytics is a unique cultural capability no one else can replicate.
Larry Wilson
VP Sales & Marketing
Flowfinity Wireless
CG companies should be implementing technology to quickly create, deploy and update enterprise mobile apps that streamline field operations and retail execution.
The need for real-time collaboration is evident across all functions in CG companies today. For example, out-of-stocks continue to cost billions of dollars each year. Better visibility at the shelf grows revenue when sales, product management, merchandising and marketing can tie planning to execution. The challenge is finding a mobile solution that has deep functionality to support many different business processes, and the agility to support updates when needed. Gartner predicts that by 2017, 70 percent of successful digital business models will rely on deliberately unstable processes designed to adapt as customers and competitors shift.
This agile mobile capability should be available to different departments from a unified platform that can be centrally managed. Departments must be able to leverage each other’s success in adopting mobile apps.
Companies like McCormick, Constellation Brands and Suja Juice are leading the way with retail execution management facilitated by flexible mobile apps. These companies are leveraging data collection apps in the hands of field sales teams to gain valuable insight at the shelf.
CTO and Founder
Retail Velocity
Only 30 years ago, consumer packaged goods (CPG) success was measured by what companies shipped into their retail channels. Business was transacted on paper, replenished by key code, tracked monthly, shipped to retailer warehouses and sold in stores. Today, CPG companies and retailers share visibility to every product at every store every day. EDI and portals replaced paper, barcodes replaced key codes, daily reporting replaced monthly, retail shelves are monitored by computer and shoppers check themselves out in the stores and online.
A multitude of data sources is arriving so much faster and richer that CPG companies are not only drowning in it, but struggling to find useful meaning and direction from the information inside it. I foresee consolidation of information within the silos of enterprises in order to mine trends, causes and actions.
Manufacturing and logistics will incorporate downstream information to improve forecasts and inventory, data science will evolve to derive causal factors and direction and cross-functional processes will streamline sales and distribution channels. It will culminate in each enterprise’s management measuring financial success based on consumer demand instead of invoiced shipments.
Tony Bender
VP and CIO
Energizer Holdings Inc.
2015 is shaping up to be a year of continued improvement for the U.S. consumer. Oil prices have declined, gas prices have fallen, U.S. labor markets are improving, wages are increasing and unemployment is falling, and the U.S. dollar has strengthened. All of this translates into more discretionary income for consumers, which bodes well for many industry categories.
Expect more strategic partnerships and consolidation within the industry this year, including mergers, acquisitions and divestitures. Several consumer products (CP) companies are separating into two or more new corporate entities to increase shareholder value. The strengthening U.S. dollar provides attractive pricing for U.S. multi-nationals to acquire new brands abroad. Also, many global U.S.-based companies continue to have cash trapped offshore, to avoid U.S. taxation, which will increasingly be used to buy brands abroad. CP companies are always searching for profitable growth, particularly in developing and emerging markets.
Look for an improving, but challenging environment this year. Given all of the industry dynamics, I anticipate major changes to the CP industry landscape during 2015!
Doug Caywood
WW Industry Director, Consumer Goods
Microsoft
Does it seem that every process, every product, and every service is being digitally transformed? They are, and while this creates tremendous risk, it is also creating tremendous opportunity. There are two critical business areas consumer goods (CG) companies should pursue to transform themselves:
- Implement a consumer-centered modern omnichannel strategy. Mobile and social technologies have paved the way for this digital transformation. Emerging capabilities in machine learning and the IoT coupled with modern e-commerce and digital marketing solutions make this actionable now. IoT data collection sensors and beacons are emerging and simple data analytics tools allows business users to gain insights.
- Empower your greatest asset — your people! The need for retail and CG companies to seamlessly collaborate anytime and on any device around a single, integrated value chain focused on the consumer can now be achieved and holds the promise of delivering significant competitive advantages.
How will you transform your business and help change the course of the industry to create the most engaging customer experiences? The future of CG is unfolding today, led by innovative leadership, and amazing new digital capabilities.
Matthew Cook
Director Business Solutions
Danone N.A. — Operations
The story for CG companies will continue to play out at that ‘Single Moment of Truth’ inside the retail store, and this is where companies need to continue to invest. The tools and the point-of-sale (POS) and warehouse data are not expensive and experimentation should be encouraged.
The challenge, however, is what to do with the data and the findings gained? Start with your own products and determine metrics against which you want to measure retail performance, such as in-stock rates, percent distribution in the store network, velocity, average days of supply in the warehouse, and any irregular peaks or valleys in inventory. You can also measure promotion and merchandising effectiveness.
From an IT standpoint, you need three things: 1) a place to put the data, and ETL tools to get it there from transactional systems; 2) a translation and user interface tool to build your analytics (many to choose from); and 3) some way to “govern” the data how each data element will be defined and how it will be used in analytics.
Keep in mind that setting up POS analytics is a means, not an end. But what gets measured usually gets managed, and that is where there are true opportunities.
Jeff DeSandre
CPG IT Professional
Home Care Products Company
In the current business climate, we tend to latch onto popular phrases like big data. We discuss them profusely as it is the appropriate thing to do. However, in reality how many people can truly define the term big data and, more importantly, have embraced the concept to add value to their organization?
Big data is not a new concept; certain industries have been dealing with large volumes of data for years. Data volume is just one component of a sound analytics strategy. This strategy needs to include the following components:
- Data Classification Strategy. How data is classified is largely based upon the necessity to aggregate the data element with other data sources.
- Data Marts and Data Warehouse. Ensure that the infrastructure can support the volume of data for your company.
- Analytics Tools. The tools matter. The heavy lifting in relation to reporting should be able to be done by analytics-savvy business team members.
- Strong Data Analysis Capabilities. Whether it is old-fashioned human Data Scientists or Cognitive Analytics tools, finding the statistical trends is what will differentiate CPG firms.
Jonathan P. Feeney, CFA
Principal
Athlos Research
Invest in big data — especially a data management platform (DMP). Consumers drown marketers in trillions of transactions, surfing habits and social media. CG companies and retailers spent the 2000s building up the tools to gather it, but the disappointing volumes in pockets of CPG, especially in packaged food, show the new data isn’t driving new sales. Why?
There are a few possible reasons, after all, middle class consumers have had it rough since 2008. Low-cost digital media has given unprecedented oxygen to ingredient and health fads more readily addressed by smaller, focused companies. It’s also likely that CG companies have been complacent. There are signs this is changing for the better.
For example, Kraft did well to migrate its Bunny Cake recipe from printouts in the kitchen utility drawer to the kraftrecipes.com site – but in 2014 Kraft used its DMP to advertise directly. The result? In April it saw a return on ad spending 4x that of any other campaign tactic and a 23 percent lift in sales.
Today, consumers get and give a lot more data. CG companies need rapid, decisive responses to optimize their sales.
Michael JP Forhez
Practice Director, Consumer Markets
Perficient
The era of the connected consumer has arrived. Most leaders now recognize that improving the maturity of information management is not just a corporate requirement, but a strategic necessity.
Creating and sustaining an Enterprise Information Management strategy (EIM) requires a comprehensive appraisal of what’s communicated both within the business, between trading partners and to the consumer. Here are eight questions worth considering:
- How do you assess your ability to communicate a consistent and compelling brand dialogue, both in the physical and virtual landscape, with your customers?
- What care is being taken for delivering messaging and/or product information to your customers?
- Do you have a friction-less interface, which supports and enhances the customer experience?
- Do you have synchronized device capability?
- Does your company have real-time inventory and delivery capability?
- How well defined is your social media capability?
- What data visualization and predictive analytics tools are being used and are they serving the agenda of the EIM?
- Do you have the necessary technology, systems and protocols for complete transaction and information security?
Mike Gamage
Director Strategic Pricing and Customer Management Solutions
Starbucks Coffee Company
2015 will likely continue to see a transformation in supply chain as retailers attempt to take advantage of online sales to support their brick-and-mortar operations. CPG manufacturers will see an increase in retailers looking for them to fulfill online orders via a separate supply chain operation.
CPG manufacturers continue to try and leverage technology to impact shelf presence and speed to shelf for new items. Manufacturers that build the capability in house will be a substantial lead above those using multiple third parties or rely on brokers to support this area. Building continued direct links with consumers bypassing retailers’ loyalty cards will build a better understanding and direct link from the brand to the consumers.
Continued shifts toward instant consumable products with ease of use, and perceived health benefits will drive consumer purchases. Pricing will begin to be available for those manufacturers that can leverage these two areas in truly innovative products and abandon the trend of line extensions.
Manufacturers’ continued use and building of demand signal repositories (DSR) will create a key difference for companies as they are able to harness large amounts of disparate data. Building off the knowledge gained from this data pricing, assortment and direct connections to consumers, will shift the power away from retailers and back to the manufacturer.
Paul J. Hardy?
Director — Emerging Markets, Global Markets
ConAgra Foods
What excites me about emerging markets is the opportunity to shape a consumer behavior… to invest in an idea that has not been tested and adapt to the learnings that come from taking a chance. At the core of this task in my organization is filtering through an ocean of internal noise that comes from tapping into systems and processes designed to support a large scale U.S. Domestic business. I wake up every day reminding myself to keep my eyes on the horizon… mainly driven by my belief in where we are going, but partly to avoid getting seasick along the way!
Joel Hopper
ITS Business Partner
Kimberly-Clark Corp.
Regardless of the technology creating the latest buzzwords there remains a need to keep first and foremost the pressing business problem as the center of focus. In recent years we’ve witnessed another wave of marketing blitzes and over hype of the latest technical advances, specifically those related to big data, data discovery and visualization. With the pressure on businesses to respond faster with greater insights, it can be tempting to make technology the center of focus with the people and process aspects of the business problem taking a backseat.
IT can perhaps deliver the greatest value by ensuring priorities maintain the balance between people, process and technology with proven problem solving techniques against clearly defined business cases.
- People: Focus on building cross-functional talent with sharing wins leveraging current capabilities, while introducing and evolving data science skills within ITS and key business resources.
- Process: Identify and partner with process owners to drive conclusions around root causes behind pain points, define and test countermeasures, and build in leading indicators to keep new processes visible and on-track.
- Technology: Simplify, standardize, and rationalize investments in technology as holistic solutions with support of people and processes necessary to maximize return on investment (ROI).
Pete Hyman
VP and GM Consumer Industries
HP Enterprise Services
New technologies are remaking the CP world — and changing how IT groups must relate to the larger CPG business. In years past, most CPG firms would consolidate their IT solutions and delivery from enterprise IT groups. Traditional IT models consisted of large-scale back office operations, from which big-package IT solutions were delivered directly to meet virtually every business and functional need. That model worked for decades, providing aggregated scale, cost savings, security, and other advantages.
But IT is changing and CPG companies need to adjust: competition is tougher, margins thinner, and time-to-market shorter. Traditional standardized, centralized solutions still get the job done, but many CPG leaders now seek more powerful and agile solutions that leverage analytics to deliver higher value to the business.
IT leaders can now deliver an impressive variety of rich, lightweight solutions — from cloud delivery and as-a-service options to new security, data management, and analytic systems. Most CIOs have decades of strength and experience delivering technology-based solutions. Now they must help the CPG business functions utilize IT, without the full weight of enterprise IT.
Kimberly Knickle
Practice Director
IDC Manufacturing Insights
Digital transformation is the priority for 2015. Many CG companies have already achieved moderate success with new technologies — including mobile applications, mobile devices, social tools, cloud, big data and analytics, and even IoT. This year, more companies will focus on combining newer technologies to support a business purpose, effectively a digital transformation. The focus is less on technology and more on supporting business requirements or business “purpose.”
Easier said than done to achieve a digital transformation. IDC estimates that 61 percent of technology spend is influenced or directly spent by lines of business. IT and business leadership must be in sync to determine which technologies to invest in when and why, for what purpose. For CG, much of the purpose behind digital transformation is coming from the CMO; IDC estimates that marketing organizations will spend 50 percent of their program budget on digital initiatives by 2016 (across all industries).
The most forward thinking companies understand that digital transformation is a continuous process to leverage technology. Success must be defined by business outcomes — for example, higher customer service levels, customer loyalty, and consumer sentiment; the creation of a marketing web and more successful promotions; and faster product introductions and constant innovation.
Gopi Krishnan
General Manager & Global Head — Strategy & Domain Consulting Retail, Consumer Goods & Transportation
Wipro Limited
One of the fascinating battles I see is between retailers and CG companies around customer ownership and brand loyalty. With technology allowing CG companies to directly reach out to their shoppers/buyers/influencers/end-consumers, it is technically now possible to know who your actual customers are, initiate a dialog with them and also keep track of hundreds of thousands of mostly unsolicited spur-of-the-moment social feedback. An example of this is smarter vending machines, which can now report their stock-outs and give tailored options to the shopper.
Retailers on the other hand, see increasing migration of revenue online coupled with falling store footfalls. While trying to retain and reign in the loyal brick-and-mortar customer base, they’ve also responded by creating broader assortments via virtual storefronts on a marketplace model to attract new customer segments. This has resulted in greater focus on private labels.
So, while retailers expand into products space with their own-labels and CG companies expand to the customer space with innovative ways to reach out to the end consumer, I believe that there’s still a significant space for the two to collaborate in retailer categories with specific challenges — where time is short (convenience chains), shopping lists are long/fixed (groceries) and options make decisions harder (electronics).
Alan Lipson
Global Retail Industry Strategist
SAS
The oft-hyped IoT appears to offer endless technological promise to the CPG industry in terms of ways to engage consumers with products, and vice versa. But, like many technologies introduced throughout history, will the reality of the IoT’s benefits outweigh the drawbacks? I think the IoT is different, and here’s why:
- Sensors for all. Technology has advanced such that almost everything has the capability to sense, measure and communicate. This provides the opportunity for more of our ‘things’ to interact with each other. That IoT ecosystem stands to make our personal and business lives less hectic and more streamlined.
- Talk amongst yourselves. The IoT allows for machines and objects to communicate with each other. The ability to communicate Machine-to-Machine (M2M) provides the ability to better manage our environment through connected gear like the Nest Learning Thermostat and the FitBit activity tracker.
- Technology-dependent life. Technology is now accepted as part of daily life. We often use technology to our advantage; some might say we depend on it for our very existence.
Ajith Madhavan
Head Consulting — CPG & Retail industry
IGATE
The digital revolution has already taken the retail world by storm. We believe 2015 will be the defining year for the CPG industry in this space. The focus will be on consumer engagement. We see clients developing more robust ROI models to decide between trade and consumer engagement spends. Internal and external collaboration is coming into sharp focus — there simply is no other way to succeed in this ‘Uberized’ world. Supply chains, promotions or marketing strategies have to be responsive enough to meet the needs of savvy, hyper-connected consumers. The explosion of technology choices is also driving a significant trend in innovation — we see a dramatic uptick in CPG companies’ willingness to commit budgets to try something new and untested. Vendor partners are coming to the party too, with interesting ways to take money out of “keeping the lights on” to spend on innovation. On-shelf availability solutions are being viewed very seriously. Also lining up in front of the CIO — demands from the business for product portfolio optimization, trade program optimization and consumer engagement projects. Big data and analytics is beginning to go beyond consumer data — farm output, commodity prices, weather — all coming together to provide the perfect launch pad of the IoT for the CPG sector.
Christophe Marcant
Vice President Product Strategy
Stibo Systems
The biggest initiative for any CG company in the coming year will be to foster strong collaboration with partners in order to provide a better customer experience and improve profits. Information sharing among retailers and CG manufacturers will become increasingly important, particularly with directives such as EU regulation No 1169. Manufacturers and retailers must now ensure that compliant information is displayed on all product packaging and in online stores. Food and beverage manufacturers must standardize their food labeling and provide even greater clarity to consumers on ingredients, nutrition and allergens.
In order to comply, packaging must be updated, and online retailers must ensure that the information they provide conforms to the regulation and is identical to the product information provided on the manufacturer’s physical packaging. Master Data Management (MDM) and Product Information Management (PIM) systems enable suppliers, manufacturers and retailers to share in the responsibility of creating accurate and reliable master data. Not only do MDM solutions help to maintain compliance, they also help manufacturers to increase customer loyalty and strengthen the digital supply chain by removing the negative “ripple effect” that can occur from poor data integrity.
Michael Marzano
IT Lead — Retail Solutions
Mondelez International
CPG companies are no stranger to big data, analytics, and business intelligence (BI) projects. Efforts around social sharing and collaboration are common as well. A real opportunity lies with the convergence of these endeavors.
The idea is to go beyond analytics and BI reports to encourage colleagues and business partners to engage, share and discuss insights generated from big data. The initiative to create a ‘data curiosity’ mindset benefits innovation and operational efficiencies.
What could this look like? A collaboration platform that allows ease of use from multiple devices will be a key enabler. Integration of BI and reporting systems with a social sharing application will allow metrics and alerts to be openly shared and discussed. But ultimately it will be the combination of people, process, technology and leadership that will create the necessary inquisitive culture.
If you are looking for a model of success consider the evolution of fantasy baseball. Each year additional metrics are created, tracked, and discussed. Technology has enabled the ability to publish, share, and encourage dialogue and debate. CPG companies must create a similar environment where metrics and analytics are not just reported but are discussed, debated, and acted upon.
Bruce Nagle
CEO & Founder
RW3 Technologies
Data is the difference between profit and loss. Companies with the right data repository and reporting technology can track in real time how and where products are selling, performance of sales teams and retail partners, and more. Timely data lets decision makers act quickly and confidently. But historically data has been siloed, throwing up roadblocks.
Barriers to organizing, housing and successfully sharing data within an organization have shrunk. Partners in the industry are simplifying their data files, accelerating new analytical reporting capabilities. Reports and scorecards that were once utilizing three to five data streams are now accessing 15 to 20 streams, depicting the most accurate retail landscape to date. Mobile reporting solutions provide custom dashboards and analytics that the entire organization can use, minimizing IT cost, training, and frustration.
2015 will be the year CPG organizations move toward a single data repository, align their objectives, and capitalize on their opportunities with data they can access, share, and use for the right decisions. Those who have already begun this venture will see an accelerated growth of capabilities moving forward.
Meena Surti Patel
AVP/Lead, Retail & Consumer Goods Consulting
Cognizant
A high priority area of focus in 2015/2016 for CPG companies is to elevate and align around the shopper to rethink and redesign the overall business model. One trend we are clearly seeing is CPG companies working with e-commerce, club, and retailers in greater collaboration to integrate marketing and fulfillment capability on store level assortments, buy online pick up at store and direct home delivery. There are three areas CPG companies need to focus on, and improve, in how they execute:
- Manufacturers and retailers along with third parties involved in extended ecosystems need to orchestrate and execute flawlessly throughout the supply chain to meet consumer demands.
- Connecting at the shelf: this idea of being able to realize the first moment of truth at that particular store — at the store level, making it easier for the shopper to see the value you are presenting, and insuring that the product is in fact in stock and at the shelf when she/he is ready to buy.
- Using advanced analytics on the big data generated by customers, sensors and other systems and managing the information that surrounds people, organizations, processes and products to improve the shopper experience for consumers.
Vikram Samant
EVP — Solutions & Pre-sales
CIGNEX Datamatics, Inc.
Today’s digitally connected consumer is influenced more by experiences, than brand names. The purchase “moment of truth” occurs online and yet, poor engagement with millennial shoppers in social channels is the No. 1 challenge facing consumer brands. CG enterprises face data integration challenges for meaningful insights that provide better replenishment, targeted promotions, and other business decisions.
CIOs need to focus on “humanizing” brands, building relevant customer engagement and deriving insights from consumer data as well as IoT data. A direct-to-consumer strategy irrespective of distribution approaches focused on providing a human face to the brand and gauging brand sentiment through analytics is key. A scalable “Business Engagement Platform” integrating Customer Engagement, Reputation Management with analytical insights across the value chain, at a reduced Total Cost of Ownership and faster deployment will be a driving force.
An increased open source software adoption due to quick proof of concepts and the stability of enterprise editions especially in systems that help engage with customers, partners, employees and those that provide insight with visualization, have helped significantly lower total cost of ownership, solve business challenges faster, innovate and attract IT talent.
Enterprises that get to the market faster, by evaluating and adopting alternative technologies to harness these interactions and ensuing data, hold the key to success.
Susan Sentell
CEO and President
Gladson
PIM will be a critical cross-functional business priority for CG organizations in 2015. The management of product images and data should no longer exist solely within departmental silos. With significant negative ripple effects caused by inaccurate and incomplete product data, CPG organizations need to establish a single version of the truth for product information.
One way to achieve an authoritative source of product content is by outsourcing the creation, updating and hosting of critical product data to an experienced third-party provider.
Bringing order to the ‘Wild West’ of PIM will pay dividends. From having the most complete and accurate data set for MDM investments, to reducing supply chain costs, to strengthening retailer relationships and ensuring shoppers have up-to-date product images and information, the focus on PIM is critical.
CPG manufacturers that can rely on accurate and robust enterprise-ready product content will be well prepared to capitalize on growth opportunities in this increasingly digital landscape; while diminishing some of the growing pains.
Thierry Soudee
CEO
UpClear
The trends in enterprise software tend to follow the trends of the consumer world... with a 3 to 5 year lag! While we hear about the upcoming wave of wearables and IoT, the enterprise is only now transitioning to the cloud and mobile-accessible systems, finally enjoying associated efficiency gains.
In 2015, CG companies will embrace technology that enhances collaboration, and software that enables quicker and more informed decisions based on ready-to-use data.
To achieve this reality, expect systems to be deployed globally, but with a high degree of market configurability, delivered through the cloud. Expect your sales team to ditch their laptops and go mobile. Expect retailer sales information to become even more granular, with greater frequency, and, most importantly, loaded directly into your sales and trade management solutions. The use of crowd-sourced retail execution data will also emerge.
Legacy systems that lived on dedicated hardware will be replaced by web-based solutions, quick-to-deploy and accessible from anywhere and any device. Emerging markets will catch up rapidly on technology and systems.
Enterprise software is becoming commonplace and the best solutions in 2015 will be cheaper, faster to deploy, and not lock you into long-term contracts.
Paulo Viola
North America CEO
NeoGrid
As supply chains become increasingly global, there are both potential risks and benefits, such as new product introductions, emerging markets and company growth. These factors have made sales & operations planning (S&OP) an even more critical business function in the CG industry. However, as companies grow, many are finding that their enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are unable to handle their S&OP processes.
Yes, it is possible to customize ERP for S&OP. But, in truth, it is a very complex, time-consuming process — ERP systems are intrinsically inflexible and are designed to connect internal business functions. Even once ERP is customized for S&OP, it will inevitably need additional configurations to meet the speed of business, demand trends and corporate changes.
Now is the time to consider decoupling S&OP from ERP systems and explore a cloud-based S&OP solution. With such a solution, companies can enable cross-functional collaboration, allowing both internal and external players to plan using the same demand-driven, real-time data to optimize resources, increase accuracies, boost sales and synchronize their supply chains.
Joe Vitucci
Application Group Manager
Kao USA
Stephen Covey said, “Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent and not enough time on what is important.” In a world where CPG companies amass ever-growing amounts of data from countless sources, systems, and projects, how can we best determine what is most important and where to most effectively spend our time?
Our enterprise program management office, or EPMO, at Kao was initiated in 2014 to begin answering these questions. Its mission is to uncover the projects that will bring the most value and insert them accordingly into an executional queue.
In 2015/2016, Kao is entering an exciting time in my area (IT support for Sales) evaluating initiatives to either update or establish its trade promotion management (TPM), post-event analysis, and sales force automation systems. However, I would be remiss to identify any of these projects or trends in sales as more important than the EPMO process itself. Our most impactful initiative is refining our EPMO to ensure the most important projects bubble to the top. This will allow us to most efficiently use limited resources and funds. Furthermore, as the EPMO grows, so too should the same mindset in how we work within our projects. The companies that can quickly identify what is most important, and then attack that, will position themselves for long-term success.
Glenn Wegryn
Principal
Analytic Impact LLC
Continued emphasis on deriving value from data and building internal capabilities to make better collaborative decisions will be a significant difference-maker in 2015/2016.
As companies continue to grapple with where and how to harness big data (as well as determining its ROI), having the internal capability to analyze data to enable better decisions is where the competitive advantage lies for CG companies. Companies will start to differentiate themselves by hiring or developing resources trained in the arts and sciences of analysis.
These are not your typical IT data jocks — they are business people first, who happen to have the technical chops to define a problem, acquire the right information, analyze the options and present an actionable recommendation. This is gold. And while perhaps not at Midas-level, when coached and guided by the right leadership, I have seen internal analytic organizations return 10x the investment in value delivered.
So what does it take to get started? A Champion: A business leader with ideas on where decision making and insights could make a difference, and has the ability to see it through multiple successes. Because competitive advantage isn’t gained by one project – it builds on itself to a point where analytics is a unique cultural capability no one else can replicate.
Larry Wilson
VP Sales & Marketing
Flowfinity Wireless
CG companies should be implementing technology to quickly create, deploy and update enterprise mobile apps that streamline field operations and retail execution.
The need for real-time collaboration is evident across all functions in CG companies today. For example, out-of-stocks continue to cost billions of dollars each year. Better visibility at the shelf grows revenue when sales, product management, merchandising and marketing can tie planning to execution. The challenge is finding a mobile solution that has deep functionality to support many different business processes, and the agility to support updates when needed. Gartner predicts that by 2017, 70 percent of successful digital business models will rely on deliberately unstable processes designed to adapt as customers and competitors shift.
This agile mobile capability should be available to different departments from a unified platform that can be centrally managed. Departments must be able to leverage each other’s success in adopting mobile apps.
Companies like McCormick, Constellation Brands and Suja Juice are leading the way with retail execution management facilitated by flexible mobile apps. These companies are leveraging data collection apps in the hands of field sales teams to gain valuable insight at the shelf.
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