In our recent webinar, “Advanced CPG Analysis for More Growth – How Big Data Analytics Are Changing the CPG Industry,” attendees had the opportunity to learn how they can take their CPG business to the next level with data analytics. If you missed our webinar, you are in luck; in this blog, we will be recapping the contents of our webinar to help you gain actionable insights for driving profits with advanced analytics.
Our Business Intelligence Practice Manager, Awais Aslam, was joined by our Strategic Sales expert, Nick Craig, for a detailed presentation discussing the limitations that a CPG company that has not been utilizing analytics might face in the current business landscape. Aslam then covered how the CPG industry is constantly changing and how Big Data is an integral part of the new, customer-focused, and highly competitive landscape.
So, let’s start with the basics – what exactly is the CPG industry?
Consumer-packaged goods are manufactured and sold quickly and at a low cost. Typically, they include non-durable household items such as toiletries, cosmetics, dry goods, over-the-counter drugs, beverages, and packaged foods.
In the increasingly competitive consumer market, business leaders must stay atop their game. They are often confronted with a series of questions that include:
- Which product will be in demand next?
- What discounts, placements, or marketing tactics will resonate with online and in-store shoppers?
- What will be the impact of seasonal promotions on sales?
- What are the effects of shelf-placement, marketing channels, and purchasing capacity on product performance?
What did we cover?
In a nutshell, the webinar focused on how and why CPG companies can utilize advanced analytics to improve the way they do business, make predictions using syndicated data, price and promote their products, and make data-driven market basket analysis.
Since the CPG industry generates an incredible amount of data, business leaders need to invest in technologies that can help analyze the market better and equip them to make better strategic decisions that increase sales and help improve brand value. The CPG industry can generate profits through actionable insights by streamlining its retail and supply chain operations for increased profits.
Our webinar covered how businesses can develop a progressive approach to spearhead profitable growth with data analytics and business intelligence. We discussed how they can:
- recognize critical drivers for change
- understand the role of advanced analytics
- address unique challenges faced in the CPG industry
- bridge the gap in CPG operations with analytics
- bring data closer for better insights
- calculate KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to boost business
Advanced Analytics vs. Traditional reporting – what is the difference?
Our webinar also helped our audience understand the difference between advanced analytics and traditional reporting. Where traditional reporting is all about taking the information and data you have and tabulating it in a more ‘digestible’ and user-friendly way, advanced analytics drives a new level of understanding and ability to utilize the data you must make informed, real-time decisions.
What is BOLD-CPG Analytics?
BOLD-CPG analytics is a set of dashboards and processes that takes data from syndicated sources like Nielsen, IRi, to name a few, and then merges it with scan data that it receives from retail stores directly. Our solution can also integrate depletion, distribution, and loyalty data. The BOLD-CPG analytics solutions take the data from all these sources, clean it, transform it, and prepare it for analysis. This processed data is then utilized in various applications such as Power BI for dashboarding, self-service BI, forecasting algorithms in Azure, etc.
The BOLD-CPG analytics solution is designed to:
- remove data silos in organizations
- identify market voids to forecast depletions
- optimize promotional sales data effectively
- improve visibility and data-driven insights
- define and track KPIs
The BOLD-CPG analytics is powered by Azure Data Storage, Azure Data Factory, Power BI, and Azure Auto Machine Learning (ML). It thus combines multiple functionalities into one robust solution that caters to the needs of CPG companies.
The BOLD-CPG solution can help companies combine disparate data stores and cater to critical business questions. For example, our solution helps bring together syndicated and scanned data to help companies answer the following questions:
- How are products performing in-store vs. specific channels and markets?
- What is the market gap if competitors perform better, but our product is not performing in a particular market or region?
- What is the distributed ACV of the market, and how to plan sales in specific regions?
- What is the sales velocity of all the stores vs. product in store?
- Why is my product not selling in a certain territory despite widespread distribution?
- Which store needs more attention in terms of territory distribution?
Similarly, regarding depletion data, the BOLD-CPG solution can help forecast:
- production and supply based on historical trends with seasonality
- market voids
- stock availability
- on-shelf expiry
- volume per outlet
Another key capability of our solution is the availability of promotion and planogram effectiveness data driven from scanned data helping them answer critical business questions regarding:
- Promotion effectiveness
- Promotion impact on other flavors / products
- Overall sales impacts
- Optimal promotion price points
- Products best suited for promotion(s)
- Optimal promotion timing and duration
- Planogram impact on sales
- Planogram configuration
- Premium spot placement ROI
Our Dashboards
Let’s look at our dashboards to show you firsthand how our solution simplifies advanced analytics for CPG companies. Our dashboards give you the opportunity to streamline forecasting, predictive analysis, market trends, supply-chain processes, and retail management.
Advanced analytics is the way forward for anyone who wants to make it in the CPG industry! We have already helped CPG giants leave their mark on the industry. If you want to know more about what AlphaBOLD has achieved in the CPG industry, read our latest case study that highlights how we helped streamline business processes for the world’s leading drink manufacturer with Microsoft Azure Platform and Power BI.
Do you have any questions? Or are you ready to get your journey towards smooth analytics started? Contact us today!
