How is Data Unlocking Business Opportunities for CPGs

E-commerce was well-established in many categories, but it was gradual for Consumer-Packaged Goods (CPG) companies until the COVID pandemic. The pandemic gave the customers a more convenient way of meeting their needs. What was just 13% of shoppers purchasing CPGs before the COVID soon jumped to 31% after March 2020.

The CPG market changed overnight; however, the experts believe the change was for good. The pandemic presented a massive scope of opportunities and triggered daunting challenges. As for CPG companies, ensuring a seamless supply chain execution became a significant cause of concern.

Supply Chain Execution Challenges for CPGs

Shifting the stores online meant outreaching more buyers than before. This translated into increased sales and more business for CPGs. Maybe not! Soon, they struggled with meeting the high demand for CPG products. In the absence of real-time data, supply chain execution fell apart with missed demands and shipments, lost sales, and penalties.

CPGs realized that to drive more sales and ensure visibility over the competition, they need a comprehensive data and analytics foundation to serve as a feedback loop. This is where Autonomous Planning & Execution comes into play. Supply chain planning and execution helps CPG companies capture real-time data and analytics to make agile, data-driven decisions. Failure to do so would result in them losing ‘seller authority’ – and the market share passes swiftly over to competitors them losing ‘seller authority’ – and the market share passes swiftly over to competitors.

Data Challenges in Supply Chain Execution

Even though a lack of on-time data is an issue for CPGs, unstructured data presents a real challenge.

Reliable, accurate, and real-time data can address numerous challenges currently faced by CPGs following the rapid digitalization of their legacy stores. With real-time data, CPG companies can forecast demand and ensure their brand visibility in online retail environments. The challenge — data is generated and drawn from multiple sources such as:

These sources contain useful, valuable, and reliable data but in varied formats and stored in different sources. None of these data is deemed helpful for CPGs unless consolidated and harmonized.

What can CPG companies do with e-commerce data?

For more information, read the whitepaper on how data helps unlock the opportunity for CPG companies.

Autonomous Supply Chain Planning & Execution — How does it Help CPGs?

A platform like TradeEdge captures granular, unstructured data from various sources and in varied formats and presents them in a that is convenient to CPG decision-makers.

It uses ML/AI algorithms to provide actionable insights in order to provide a clear picture of how sales, supply chain, marketing, and finance teams are performing, driving more effective e-commerce operations. For instance, the TradeEdge Platform helped one of the leading CPG clients improve its case fill rate by 6% and achieve 4.5% lower inventory, fewer out-of-stock penalties, and up to 1.4% of category revenue.

A supply chain execution platform like the TradeEdge creates a supportive infrastructure for e-commerce clients, dividing the demand-supply execution into four steps:

Conclusion

Creating an infrastructure for a more effective e-commerce set-up is precisely what the CPGs need to handle bulk online orders and manage offline sales. To realize such an ambitious objective, CPGs should ensure seamless execution of their demand-supply chain. That’s not possible in the absence of data.

This is where an Autonomous Supply Chain Planning & Execution Platform like TradeEdge can be a real game-changer.