From Risk Mitigation to Value Creation: Transformative CPG Go-To-Market Strategies

Consumer goods companies find themselves at the forefront of a quickly evolving landscape, grappling with fluctuating market conditions and the enduring effects of the pandemic. On December 6th, CGT joined Paul Tabet, global commercial leader and ex. commercial, sales VP, PepsiCo, and Explorium’s Ras Gil-Boulos to discuss what’s top of mind for CPG leaders in these uncharted waters, touching on compelling use cases of data, analytics, and generative AI in white space analysis, field sales optimization, effectively mitigating supplier risks, and more. In this webinar transcript, learn how leading companies are developing transformational capabilities to stay agile and relevant in the face of industry changes while meeting consumer preferences' and the need to create more value, personalization, experience, variety, and convenience – both near-term and in the future. Maia Jenkins: Hello, welcome to this webinar on “Effective Go-To-Market Strategies for CPG Growth.” My name is Maia Jenkins, I'm an editor at CGT, and I'm thrilled to be hosting this webinar today. Consumer goods companies are facing a complex landscape, one that's affected by a weakened economy, high inflation, changing consumer behaviors, and many businesses, in reality, are still dealing with reverberation from the pandemic. Although consumer demand is expected to remain high, changing buyer habits mean that CPGs have to think on their feet, move with the times, and shift as well.What's occupying the minds of consumer goods leaders as they navigate this uncertainty? How are leading CG's planning to achieve profitable growth as they try to do more with less? That will be the focus of our conversation today. We'll touch on some of the top trends shaping the industry today, including generative AI, as well as take a look at some interesting use cases around white space analysis and field sales optimization, supplier risks, and more. Without further ado, joining us today are Paul Tabet and Ras Gill-Boulos. Thank you for taking the time to speak with us about these trends and topics today. Paul and Ras, please take a moment to introduce yourselves and describe your role at your respective companies. Paul Tabet: Thank you, great to be with you today. I'm Paul Tabet. I'm a commercial leader in the space of food and beverages. I've spent twenty-six years of my career with PepsiCo in various commercial roles, general management, franchise management, and across multiple geographies – the United States, a global role, Asia, Middle East, and Africa. I'm delighted to be here today, to share some of my humble learnings and my passion on go-to-market. Please make the session as interactive as you want it to be, I'd be happy to answer any questions.Ras Gill-Boulos: I'm Ras Gill-Boulos. I'm the CMO at Explorium. Paul, actually, we know Paul because he has worked with us at Explorium. To give you a little bit of background, we are an external data house. We work with many CPGs helping them understand where to go, how to do the item analysis, and where to go with strategy. A little bit about my background, I've been CMO in a couple of data organizations – I feel like that's really been from VI to external data. Before that, I was on the investing end, as well as a consultant, having worked with some of the names of folks who are on this call today. I’m happy to answer any questions and am looking forward to having a casual, engaged conversation. Jenkins: Thank you both. It's great to have you here with us today. Let's dive in, looking at the industry broadly, with regards to data and analytics, what are the top challenges facing the CPG industry today, and what are some of the most creative ways you've seen companies addressing them?Tabet: You indicated some of them are significant changes in consumer behavior, that is actually shifting the shape of demand for CPG companies. You can also see significant changes on the retailer side. There are lots of disruptions happening with a lot of investment flowing towards disruptive retail formats that dis-intermediate consumers and retail with a lot of private equity and VC companies. There are also huge challenges on the supply chain, particularly post-COVID, with the new expectation created by Amazon, and the convenience that it has created in the mind of consumers. There is, of course, a lot of corporate responsibility with more stakeholders focusing on environmental and social, and corporate governance and responsibility. That's why a lot of CPG companies are thinking again: How do I make sure that I become a good corporate citizen when it comes to direct distribution, electrical vehicles? That's why there is a lot of boom on how to get equipment to the trade with zero-net emissions.All these trends are creating disruptive forces when you think about go-to-market strategies. Today, companies are thinking, "Hey, consumers want more value," particularly with a huge headwind on inflation that we've seen. They want more personalization and experience with the brand, they want more variety, and they want more convenience. We know also, that there are significant changes happening on buying and shopping behaviors with on-screen ordering, and retailers reconfiguring that space to think about an omnichannel approach to purchases. This is tremendous, both on the consumer and on the retail side with all the technology and digital transformation that is impacting the entire value chain. If you are a CPG company, you have a lot of changes on the consumer, a lot of changes on the retail, and a lot of changes on the supply chain and fulfillment. You see how much capital is being unlocked to support the economics of short-time deliveries and fulfillment strategy. That means you have to look holistically at the entire value chain and build those transformational capabilities to keep the go-to-market strategy agile and relevant for the consumer, as well as the trade. Here comes the biggest challenge – and a huge opportunity – for CPG companies. You see other industries, faster and more agile in that space, and this is the entire digital transformation. To your point, Maia, how do you unlock new technologies that make it more convenient for the consumer to adopt the omnichannel strategy? How do you also adopt technologies that automate your fulfillment center at proximity to ensure an amazing consumer delight when it comes to experience in delivery, customer service? The same thing goes for retail. Digital transformation for CPG is going to be the most relevant muscle that I see as a challenge for some companies, but definitely a huge opportunity for those who can embrace it and accelerate it over the next few years.Gill-Boulos: This is a perfect point for me to jump in. Paul, you covered most of the spectrum already, so I’ll add a very specific, interesting aspect of what we've seen. A lot of the folks we work with think about inflation. Look at the U.S. – I'll just talk about the U.S market for now – if we look at different markets, the numbers are different. You're looking at nine-plus percent. The heart of it is that customers, because of that 9%, are going to change or have changed the way they're looking at the goods they buy, how they're spending money, and how pricing matters. For CPG folks, while there's a lot of the digital transformation piece to think about, there's also the nitty-gritty of what do we do today? How do we talk to them today so that they're picking us versus the other?There was a study I believe McKinsey had done a couple of months ago, where according to the data, folks are going towards Costco-type things because they feel like they're saving much more money there. There's a little bit more of a cost savings mindset. What this gives the CPG companies an opportunity to do, is to sit down and think, "Okay, how do we target these folks? How do we speak to them in the language that matters the most?" That's where you'll see the immediate difference. Of course, I agree with everything Paul said on supply chain and so forth, but this is the short-term approach that companies are taking. Then, at the same time, planning for what it's going to look like 5-10 years down the road with the changes that are happening in technology.Tabet: Absolutely. You're spot on, Ras.Jenkins: It's very interesting. Both of you, in a sense, are talking in terms of personalization, reaching consumers, and meeting them where they are, and thinking about how to not only leverage data to tailor that experience. But also to think about how that experience has changed, the way that consumers are thinking about the way they spend money, and how digital transformation can play into that as well. These CPGs are being tasked with doing more with less in the face of these disruptive forces that you mentioned, Paul.Gill-Boulos: That's the key word though. Across different industries, and specifically with CPG, how do you do more with less? That's really been the name of the game, and I like the way that you put it there, because it's what's top of mind for everybody.Jenkins: Absolutely. Ways that technology can help to do more with less. In that vein, talking about one of the top trends, probably one of the top terms of 2023: generative AI. These days, it's difficult to have a technology conversation without talking about generative AI, but how is generative AI impacting the CPG industry? Paul?Tabet: Generative AI is the most researched word as we stand today in 2023, and particularly within CPG.Gill-Boulos: I like that the Oxford Dictionary came up with the “most used” word. I was surprised it wasn't GenAI. It was a risk, which we could talk about differently, but it wasn't GenAI as I was expecting.Tabet: I would say it leverages this technology across the spectrum to the entire commercial strategy. Take Ras’ example on pricing. Today, AI is an amazing help and support in delivering prospective selling, as well as building pricing strategy and architecture across channels.We spoke about the proliferation of channels with the omnichannel approach – you have online and you have offline. How do you leverage intelligent pricing? This is where AI allows you to look at many more indicators, and blends that data into meaningful insights with the necessary regression. Of course, you should have the data analytics and data lakes to be able to have the data and ensure the data is valid for use. Once you have that data lake, then you are able to leverage a lot of the analytics to determine: the best price point for each of the customers, when to be on motion, at what price for which pack, what the financial return will be, the impact on the business, and the value share. Will you cannibalize your portfolio; will you eat from the competition? What is the value that you're going to create for both the customer as well as the company?This is one of the areas where I've seen AI do extremely well, and also build a lot of data-driven decision-making for the key account management team, who used to, in the past, repeat the promotions that were done last year. Now, you have a much more intelligent tool that allows you, based on data and financials, to do this pricing strategy in a more rewarding way for both consumers and customers.Similar things on innovation today. AI is used as a tool to optimize innovation. There are AI tools that look at ingredients, health and wellness criteria, shoppers and consumers, and put all this together to help develop a list of innovations that are most relevant to the trends – consumer trends, ingredients, health and wellness, etc. – that are prevailing for this category. Pervasive use of AI – even in terms of execution, there is tremendous usage that CPG companies are seeing, both small and scale – are doing extremely well. They are spot on when it comes to doing more for less, because it allows you to deliver productivity. Because of AI, you can deploy sales efforts and headcount in the field, behind the outlets that have the highest propensity to deliver revenue. This is a huge productivity initiative that allows you to grow the top line with a more cost-effective approach.Gill-Boulos: I am going to take two angles. First, from the CMO perspective, and how GenAI has affected the CPG industry. One thing it has done tremendously well is allow us to create hyper-personalized messaging very easily. I'm sure many of you have played with ChatGPT, or had emails written from that. On my team, we've used it quite a bit.IKEA, for example, focuses on hyper-personalization by the regions that they're in, not even that, but also by the stores that they're in. They use these GenAI tools to create very specific messaging given all of these criteria. It would've taken a team days to do that. Now, it's done very quickly using GenAI tools. That's really exciting, especially for all of the go-to-market leaders here from CPG. You're already seeing peers do that. They're already there. Some of the best marketing teams already put that as part of it. Think about hyper-personalization, it's always taken a long time. Now, the turnaround times are much shorter. So that's one.Second, from a data perspective, we've used GenAI tools to create data that is very deep. Think about some of your competitors. The data is surface-level, but with our tools we’re able to say, "Hey, we're interested in knowing what's going to happen to supply chains.” GenAI allows us to use data to say, "Let's go deeper and go by certain specific customers, figure out how you are doing that, and then get that data back to you." When sales teams are making decisions, it's not simply knowing you have five suppliers in X, Y, and Z regions. It's knowing there are 5 suppliers that are all ramping up with regards to what they're buying and this is what you need to know. It gets to be very personalized. That is the most exciting part about how we're working with CPG customers, and how GenAI is playing a huge part.Jenkins: We'll come back to personalization again. The potential of generative AI is, in terms of its speed and scale, the potential to take the guesswork out, while adding that speed and scale. I'm interested to see what this next year will bring because it seems like the attitude is split between a fear of being left behind, and caution, a little bit as well, about how to use these tools responsibly, safely, and effectively. It's definitely an interesting pivot point for a lot of industries, and I'm glad you mentioned marketing, as well. That's one of the areas with the largest impacts we've seen.Switching over to the second part of our conversation here, we're going to take the time to touch on some use cases for CPG sales and marketing teams, and look at how they're approaching data and GenAI in interesting ways. For each of these, we're going to look at successes, pitfalls, opportunities, the challenges, how they're solving issues with data and using generative AI, and any outcomes and metrics as well. The first use case I'd like to touch on in terms of white space analysis and lead gen. Can you tell us a little bit about the challenges, what's being solved here, and any outcomes that you're seeing or metrics?Tabet: Within the CPG world, one of the biggest challenges we've always had, in the absence of digital capabilities, is going after white spaces. The challenge is always how much resources and how much investment you want to put in without having the full visibility of where the opportunity lies, as well as where you can extract sustainable revenue out of these white space analysis. This is where it's a very costly exercise, it's complex and requires a lot of feet on the street to validate findings. This is where generative AI works extremely well in helping to bring more intelligence because of the data. If you have the data and the sanitization of the data done – this is extremely important because otherwise garbage in, garbage out. Having that sanitized set of data is very important as it allows you to build a very strong penetration, and competitive approach to penetration strategy when thinking about white space opportunities. It helps segment those white spaces based on psycho-metrical data, demographic, more enriched data points, that narrow the opportunity and prioritizes it for you. One example that I've seen working best – in my almost 30 years of career, going after white spaces in multiple markets across Asia, and even here in the U.S. – is the work that Explorium has done, in terms of focusing the opportunity and prioritizing it for CPG companies. The way you do it is exactly, as Ras alluded to it, deep machine learning with the right set of data. With the right partnership between the CPG and the partner, to make sure that you're building the right proximity between those new segments created that you've never penetrated in the past, versus the businesses that you have already today.There is a distance mapping exercise that Explorium is very good at, which allows you to mirror what type of consumer retailer exists in those new segments, and how close they are in terms of commercial capabilities that CPG companies need to deploy in order to win and sustain the business. It's one thing to go after a white space opportunity, and it's a totally different story on how to maintain it.CPG executives are very familiar with this pain point. Sometimes you tick the box, “I converted the customer,” but then two months later, because of service, engagement, multiple issues, the customer fell off. You've deployed all the costs, but then, what we call the life cycle value of the customer is very low, and you end up with a huge investment and very low return. This is one of the areas where I've seen deep machine learning and artificial intelligence working well with the right set of data to deliver amazing returns on selling efforts. At the same time, if you are a large company, or even a small company, thinking of setting up a team of farmers and hunters for business, this is an amazing tool to optimize deployment and maximize return.Gill-Boulos: Paul, you couldn't have said it better. You've taken my breath away. With regards to white space analysis and what we see across different CPGs that we work with, it all comes down to the data. There's always a fight between quantitative versus qualitative. Within a white space, and especially when we work with sales leaders, there's a lot more emphasis on the qualitative, which is important and that's something that you should take into account. But in this white space analysis work, what's important is to bring the two together. The amount of data that we're able to go and work with, for places like us, because we have all of the external data, it allows us to do it at a much faster pace.I'm glad that it was something Paul also saw as a success. That's the important part, how do you bridge that? How do you bring people together? I am a huge fan. This is more of a personal take, but I don't make decisions without data, and with white space analysis, it becomes more and more important to bring that in so that qualitative reasoning is backed by the quantitative side of things. That allows us to see a lot of success, and hopefully that came through in Paul's answer as well.Jenkins: Absolutely. I keep hearing this phrase, “garbage in, garbage out,” and it comes back to this idea of there is no shortage of data, but it depends on the quality of the data. As you mentioned, the depth of the data that you are working with as well. The next use case is in field sales optimization. Again, thinking about some of the challenges, the issues that can be solved within field sales optimization, using data, generative AI, other technologies, and any metrics you can share as well, or outcomes that you're seeing.Tabet: A key pain point for CPG companies, particularly those who are into the direct distribution model, or even if you're relying on third-party distribution partners, is getting the right data, and more importantly, getting the right sales processes to make decisions on how to optimize the deployment of the sales force. How do you optimize the execution, and how do you reduce your cost to serve? A lot of companies are now looking at how to fight inflation. Cost to serve, which is usually the second largest P&L line for CPG, is critical to get the right agile and number.When you look at the field and the go-to-market, which I'm extremely passionate about, it's about how to leverage the data to streamline sales priorities, communicate to the team in a uniform, consistent, and simple way:First, what are the priorities for the month? What are the priorities for the week? What are the priorities for the day? That includes ordering, task management, scheduling and deliveries, and delivery visibility, which is critical at this day and age, with all the technology that exists. Leveraging technology and AI helps to streamline all these processes, and most importantly, create one destination for the sales force and the front line to go to and facilitate work. I'm sure, as part of CPG, everyone here has felt the pain post-COVID. Having the front line jobs filled is not as easy as it used to be. People have other choices, easier jobs that are more rewarding. Making the life of your front line more sustainable and balanced is critical. This is where AI and machine learning helps tremendously – in scheduling the life of a salesman or a supervisor in a way that makes it easier for him to manage his day.Second, once you reach the store, how do I deliver execution excellence? How do I leverage the data historically and with AI, generative AI, predictive modeling, that allows me to get to the next best action. Almost “standardizing” for the sales team on if this is the situation in the store, this has been the order, this is what I know is coming from marketing. I have the Super Bowl, I know that you've been buying that much, that there’s an inflow of consumers on the weekend. This is what the next best action is. It’s almost predictive ordering models that are built in the platform that allow the salesman to optimize the order and push for additional initiatives based on the marketing calendar that the team has worked on. This is another area that is becoming critical and putting it in one platform. One go-to solution is to reach the store with all the processes, system visibility. One platform, ideally, integrated to optimize the volume extraction from that store.Last, but not least, for more sophisticated customers, like Walmart and larger formats, how can you bake in some of the strategic joint planning and common workflows between trade marketing, business development teams, merchandising and sales, to make sure that there is a more integrated approach to customer management? Those are within the area of field teams. I've seen this technology, digital transformation happening, and making huge inroads in optimizing the execution level at the marketplace.Gill-Boulos: The most important thing to understand here is that a lot of CPGs are very forward-thinking when it comes to field sales optimization because that's the bread and butter. We've heard over and over again that you could have a great system of data, but does it go down to the right person? Does it also, at the same time, give the right type of data to go out there and make those decisions when it comes to being in the field? What we're seeing and is very useful – the folks that are doing well right now – is looking for the edge for field sales teams. How do you give them an edge versus the others?That’s where deep data comes from, and a lot of folks, especially on the GTM side of things, get very uncomfortable when they hear deep data. They're like, "Okay, we're talking about all of these machines." No, no, no, it's the outcome of it. There is machine learning and everything else that stands in between, but the outcomes of it to know what is different about a specific region versus the others? Not just the firmographic details that everybody has, but what specifically is it about it that makes it different to have an edge? That's the name of the game. How do you give your team the edge, what data are you using for that, and how are you disseminating it to everybody? That, for me, has been the most exciting thing to watch in the last couple of years.Tabet: Ras, if I may. I agree with most of what you said. The only thing, as I mentioned in the beginning, CPG is not yet as fast as other industries in embracing that digital transformation. It's less about the technical aspect, it's about the change management. The technology with machine learning or artificial intelligence, is now quite pervasive. You see a lot of CPG companies doing green shoots in field sales. I did an application for my salesman, it's easier for him to order. I can track my delivery – there’s a lot of that. I agree. But the magic happens because digital is about optimizing the value stream. All in all, if you keep addressing it on a topical basis or a tactical basis, while it gives some dividend, it's not an end-to-end optimization or transformation.That's why it's important to understand, when thinking about digitizing your front line, to put horizon one, horizon two, horizon three, so you have full visibility. It's going to be an evolution, but at least you know the phases, and build integration accordingly. It becomes more cost-effective to approach it in a modular way – to do this in field sales, then build the intelligent prospecting, and then my execution excellence modules in a way that is integrated, and more importantly, in a way that takes other functions with you. The biggest challenge, and the CPG team would relate to this, is when you go to people who've been in direct distribution for 30 years and tell them, "We're going to change the way you work." Oh, my God, why don't you go play somewhere else?The idea is to build that change management approach, so that you can move fast, but more importantly, with clear visibility of where you're going in a modular, integrated way, that makes it cost-affordable for the company.Jenkins: That segues nicely into the last use case. A lot of what we've been touching on is this idea of collaboration, integration, increasing visibility. To that end, Ras, how can these technologies help mitigate supplier risks effectively? What are you seeing, how people are doing this in an interesting way?Gill-Boulos: Imagine being able to, on one platform, get an idea of the tier one, two, and three suppliers, if they have any lawsuits against them, how they've performed in their last 10K, how many people they're hiring, have there been layoffs. Those are the views that are changing the way that folks are thinking about supply chain risk. Being able to get that as a flag upfront, as it's going on. This is not something – at least for a lot of folks on this call – that they're monitoring day-in and day-out, but we do that. Our platform does that. Generative AI does that.That's where we've seen a lot of interest among CPGs, and to be honest, a lot of manufacturing too. They want to understand what's going on and have it all in one platform, in real-time, to give an update. Decisions are being made monthly, weekly, quarterly. You don't want to be a quarter behind on that, because that would have a huge impact on your revenue. That's a big part of how we work with folks on that.Tabet: Not only from procurement, but also companies in CPG that want to use co-manufacturers, are concerned about IP rise.Gill-Boulos: That's a great point.Tabet: There are many areas, particularly post-COVID, with all the geopolitical instability. If alternative sourcing is needed, how are contingency plans built to make sure tariffs, war between China and the U.S. – how do you manage this complexity? This is where value is added with a lot of these digital tools.Gill-Boulos: It's exciting that companies are doing that already. This technology has been in the market for a year, a little bit more than that, where folks are getting it, and are moving quickly on it. We're not quite there yet, but it's interesting and I'm very much looking forward to seeing how it changes in the next year, and the years after that.Tabet: The entire environmental responsibility related to partners. More and more CPG companies are extremely conscious about their footprint, and not only their own, but also the partners that they choose to go with and how good of a corporate citizen they are – be it human sustainability, product sustainability, environment, and so on.Jenkins: It's an exciting time full of lots of opportunities, and challenges as well. It’s intriguing to see what the next year brings as we stand going into 2024. That brings us to the end of the conversation. Thank you, Paul and Ras, for sharing your thoughts with us and sharing those examples. We do have some time for some questions. The first is, which technologies will be most adopted in 2024 by CPG companies? So looking ahead.Tabet: Trade promotion is a huge investment. Historically, to overlap large numbers, the tendency of the key account management team and trade marketing is to duplicate a lot of the previous promotion.Digital transformation is completely re-imagining the process. If I'm to paint the art of the possible, if you have the right data, well sanitized by the customer, then you are able to address this in two areas. Where do you see digital transformation impacting the process? Number one, depending on the ERP solution and how sophisticated it is, it can play a major role in optimizing the promotion. You don't have to directly jump into sophisticated AI models, but with the right ERP solution, there are applications that you can use on top that can leverage the spend on specific promotions and look at more in-depth data – as I mentioned, some of it quantitative, some of it qualitative, based on the consumers of the retailer – and allow you to build a more cohesive and rewarding, definitely in terms of IRR, trade promotion.The second part is building an AI promo calendar. People in CPG and go-to-market, or managing large customers, spend endless amounts of time managing multiple Excel files, different sources of data, and trying to build a calendar. Then, they go to the customer, with only joint alignment and planning. They change these promotions, and when they change them, it's very difficult to track. This is where capabilities with new applications enriched by AI, allow you to come up with the right data. Again, what are the right mechanics for this promotion? Once you identify the business objective, you want to gain share, do you want to grow revenue? Depending on what is the original, are you launching an innovation? What is the objective that you're trying to achieve? It gives you the best promo mechanics to achieve those objectives.Not only this, that tool will take the different promotions and generate an AI promo calendar, that you go to the customer and manage live in a joint business planning with the buyer or category head at the customer level. It's a huge revolution. It's easier said than done. It has a lot of change management. First, making sure that your system is integrated with ERP financials, because as mentioned, the company spends billions of dollars. It's important to make sure pricing is aligned, reconciliation between the promo calendar and the billing happens because customers play a lot on those differences in prices. The change management journey is considerable, but the impact can be quite significant in terms of IRR.Jenkins: Thank you, you answered the question fantastically. What role does ideation and innovation play in CPG companies? I think we touched on a little bit here, but expand maybe on the ideation and innovation aspect.Tabet: It's huge. You alluded to it, Maia, in the beginning. The evolution in consumer trends is both in demographics, but more importantly, in purchase behavior. Omnichannel is a huge fuel to this phenomena. Now, people have the luxury of, what we call, the endless aisle.When they go online, they have the luxury to surf through thousands of SKUs, versus in brick-and-mortar where you have limited space. This is becoming a significant incentive for innovation, which consumers are looking for. For example, we have more ethnic demographics in the U.S., and more importantly, people are getting more accustomed to new culinary sources. They want to try Chinese flavors or Indian flavors. On top of new demographics, there are people who have the inclination to try new cuisines, and leverage those kinds of flavors to try that. Therefore, innovation will be the name of the game. However, with all the inflation that is coming, as Ras mentioned, people sometimes go to different packs. Again, not only brand and flavor, but also pack innovation is going to play a critical role over the next five years.Gill-Boulos: No one – from the biggest CPG to a smaller company – can stay away from innovation. You're having new generations of folks coming in, being able to buy. They're not going to buy the same mac and cheese that the parents bought. There's a whole bunch of new brands that are coming out as well. Everything from how it's done, the flavors, to how much it costs, how it's packaged – it all matters. People have a lot more opinions, they also have a lot more choice. That's the part that we need to get smarter about: to understand where it is going. What's available out there? I'm based here in San Francisco, and on a daily basis, you have a new company coming up to disrupt what's happening.It's important not to sit on your laurels in any way and just say, "What's coming up? What's next?" There are loads of companies that have taken different approaches. It's whether they've internally created innovation teams that will take on these new generations, the new type of people, like with immigration and everything else, coming in. There have also been M&A, where they're buying different companies, smaller ones, to bring them in-house. Those who are good today, may not be good tomorrow, if they're not thinking about it. The best ones are already thinking about what it's going to look like 10 years down the road.Tabet: It's not innovation for the sake of innovation, but to create value. Value is very important. We have to be careful that as you get into innovation, you're not diluting margins – what we call “margin-accretive innovations” – to the extent possible, unless you have a market share issue. That's so important. Ras mentioned mergers and acquisitions, which really tuck in brands or capabilities that are adjacent or compatible with what you do best. We've seen a lot of CPG companies acquiring brands and killing them, versus being able to support them. Looking at the entire value chain of capabilities is important when thinking about mergers and acquisitions.Jenkins: How will generative AI improve the sales force planning, thinking would math optimization work better, similarly for supplier risk monitoring? How is generative AI more about document analysis?Tabet: Today, there are a lot of different tools for sales force planning, as I mentioned. One of the applications that works extremely well is Bringoz. It deploys a lot of dynamic scheduling and planning. We mentioned generative AI, there are tools that tell you exactly how the route is going to look in real time. How do you change the sequence of your sales call, and how do you coordinate the delivery? The team that delivers the product to brick-and-mortar, particularly the large ones, are different than the one that merchandises. Make sure that you have the right planning for these two teams and synchronization, because we all know that merchandising happens best when you have the product delivered. It's very important to leverage those tools.These are the ones that I've had experience with. You buy a solution off the shelf and try to tailor it. Again, that’s a lot of change management, because those solutions are usually small companies, they're not used to working with large CPG. How do you embrace them? How do you nurture them in a way that they build the capability in a way that addresses your need, but at the same time, builds the right governance, the right approach with the company for a long-term relationship. That's one area, I've seen other companies building their own homegrown scheduling and planning model, which is more painful, but probably cheaper in terms of sustainable cost. You need to also hire the right resources to make sure that you have something that really makes a difference. To Ras' point, building an advantage and an edge versus another company is probably easier. What I've seen is that it's easier to work with something that exists and then tailor it to optimize it for your sales force planning.Jenkins: Thank you. Ras, would you like to add anything?Gill-Boulos: I’ll add a bit to the second part of the question, which was about supplier risk monitoring. Is it more document analysis? The way the GenAI tools work right now, is that it's whatever publicly available data is out there. So, yes, a lot of it is document analysis. It is figuring out what is available out there and reading through it, coming through it really, as quickly as possible. As we talk about edge, the edge is the speed in which that can be done. Instead of hiring teams and teams of lawyers and analysts to get that done, this is done much faster, and done on the platform itself. That's where I would like to focus.Jenkins: Looking ahead to the future, we talked about generative AI being the word or the term of 2023. If you had to look into your crystal ball, just as we wrap up here, what do you think will be some of the top technologies that will be most adopted in 2024, or a trend that you see shaping the industry in 2024?Tabet: I'll go back to before getting into the individual technology. The biggest theme for CPG is going to be how successful the company can be in terms of digital transformation. Looking end-to-end at the value chain that is at the heart of your go-to market strategy. Putting the right vision and the right change management practices, the strategies, the roadmap, and those enabling capabilities like change management, to make sure that you have cross-functional support. Nothing happens in isolation. If we keep digitizing or doing AI in sales, but not in marketing, or not in supply chain, you will have green shoots, as I mentioned. The real magic happens if you have the ability, as a leader, to articulate that art of the possible or the vision, and get the cross-functional team to rally behind you, to get their commitment on a roadmap. As I mentioned, horizon one, horizon two, horizon three, and be able to monetize. Start small, proof of concept, pilot, deliver, so you gain the commitment of the organization. That increases the speed and delivers tremendous reward. This is going to be the biggest theme for CPG.Gill-Boulos: We're going to see applications of generative AI and how companies are going to start using them. Right now, it's mystical – what is available out there. In the next couple of quarters you'll see more and more uses that come up. It'll be very interesting to document how CPGs are using them. We talked initially about how IKEA and marketing are using them. That's going to be the most exciting thing to see: how are we going to start using this? Not just how we're using it, but what are the successes, how much more revenue? At the end of the day, it's how do you optimize your company so that you can actually deliver more revenue as well? That's going to be something that I'm watching next year.Tabet: Talking about IKEA, Ras, I was looking a bit at their digital transformation. How IKEA approached digital transformation, again, was the magic of looking holistically. What they noticed is when they went to sales, marketing, supply chain, engineering – every single function had their own agenda or their own deliverables, which were sometimes conflicting. The “don't think task” is always how do you boil down these conflicting goals to bring them to the lowest common denominator. Once you are able to align the leadership – and in the case of IKEA, it was the values of the company – everybody shared those values, so they started there. They mobilized resources and started with building small proof of concept that got the people behind it, and they embraced digital. It's actually one of the most successful companies in terms of change management and digital transformation. I hope CPG companies can follow.Gill-Boulos: It is really exciting. Paul, thank you so much for giving the CPG color to it. This has been a great conversation.Jenkins: Great words to end on. I echo, thanking Paul for joining us today and sharing your thoughts with us. And also Ras, for joining and having such an enlightening conversation about what to expect in the upcoming year, and some of the exciting things that are happening in this space around the CPG go-to-market strategies, generative AI, data and analytics. It's all a really urgent, exciting ecosystem, one that we are watching with eagerness as well.Thank you to our sponsor, Explorium, it's been great hosting this webinar with you. I hope you have a great rest of your day.

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