Powering the CPG’s Direct to Consumer Program with Insights to Improve Sales
The CPG industry has a new digital weapon in its battle to stay aligned with the customer.
For decades the industry has been unable to interact directly with the customer, having to rely on its retail partners to provide insights into customer demands and buying habits. Now, it can use ITC Infotech’s digital Platforms of Intelligence to gain direct visibility into customers (profiles, buying behavior, propensities and demands). This spells an end to futile trade promotion spends of which 70%, frustratingly, go straight to the retailer’s coffers.
The traditional lack of customer insights has many downsides.
These include field sales representatives being unable to take the right decisions and frequent out of stock (OOS) situations that lead to lost sales opportunities. This scenario results in alienating customers who then take their business to competition. ITC Infotech’s Platforms of Intelligence for the CPG industry changes this. It provides valuable customer insights using supplier, retailer, customer, ERP, CRM, trade promotion and 3rd party data. The insights generated by the data can be applied to decisions around channel management, predicting demand, SKU and assortment management based on customer location/ price points, and help determine which retailers to work with. The outcome: Improvement in sales productivity, reduction in OOS, better demand forecast, and significant trade savings.
Compelling evidence available to support the effectiveness of the intelligent platform.
A Leading Diversified CPG Company | A Leading Global Beverages Company | A Leading Manufacturer of Household Products in the US |
Improved sales productivity by 30%, reported an increase in ROI by 1.5% and a reduction in retail OOS by 1.8% after integrating global trade & commercial planning with intelligent platform | Executed scenario-based sales and trade operations planning using our platform to improve 30% sales forecast and a 60% reduction in S&OP cycle time. | Improved trade promotion planning with the in-built analytics on our platform. They recorded a 1.75% increase in sales in the first 3 years and unlocked 3.3% in trade savings. |
Your CPG business can benefit from ITC’s Platform of Intelligence if you need to:
- Address value-conscious customers and develop new products to suit their preferences
- Leverage new buying patterns such as subscription-based choices
- Understand why a customer prefers a rival brand
- Create agile and intelligent supply chain
- Create alignment between trade and supply chain
- Improve margins
- Improve the outcomes from trade promotion spends
An End-To-End Integrated Platform To Deliver Unmatched Intelligence.
ITC Infotech’s solution delivers unmatched intelligence using an analytical engine for segmentation, predictive and optimization modeling, pre-built AI/ML models to improve marketing effectiveness (and for faster implementation), and modular plug and play technology components to augment your existing IT ecosystem. Our cloud-based, scalable and secure platform comes with data visualization for self-service reporting and an intelligent virtual assistant to support your field force with guided selling and greater consumer engagement. And, in keeping with our commitment to deliver excellent value, the platform is available in a low-risk outcome-based opex model. The platform represents a large step forward for the CPG industry that has been challenged for decades in understanding its customers and leveraging the insights to improve sales, margins and brand salience. Click here to know more about our solution.
Author:
Venkatesh Agarwal
Vice President, Digital Experience,
ITC Infotech