34|Retail News|March 2021|www.retailnews.ie
Data and FMCG
A data-driven decade ahead? How will the consumer packaged goods market of the future utilise data to add value between all the elements in the supply chain?
inefficient and costly supply chain. Data moves too slowly and tends to be kept hidden in various silos that stop it from being shared in ways that would make it more valuable.” John: “We are still seeing tension between CFOs and COOs and the cost of data versus the value of the data. We are spending a lot of time and money collecting and cleaning data, but the way the CPG sector is sharing and using data is keeping the value lower than it should be. Until we start processing data more quickly and sharing it more freely, we will continue to see that tension exist.”
IN the final of the series of three webinars hosted by business analysts RecommenderX on the use of data in the Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) market, the panel discussed how the Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) sector will look in 10 years, with a focus on data and how its use will be improved by FMCG brands and products. Contributors included Devan Hughes, CEO of online grocery shopping platform Buymie; Kevin McCarthy, CEO of RecommenderX; Hash Alsaidi, Head of Business Development with RecommenderX; and Dan Ryan, eCommerce and New Revenue Streams Manager with Unilever.
Dan: “We are still very much in the middle of this journey to realising the full value of data in CPG. I recall presenting data to clients 10 years ago in the run-up to Christmas and their response was ‘that’s great, but when are we going on half price?’; now we have come to a place where we’re almost obsessed with having data and knowing it is accurate. But we still haven’t really got to the good stuff, the valuable stuff, where we get and process data quickly enough that we can use it to profitably inform our future decisions and actions. Data is only valuable when you use it to produce value, let it help you make better decisions, and unfortunately in CPG, we are not quite there yet.”
How well is the supply chain of data working for the CPG sector? Will it change over the next decade? Devan: “My background is not FMCG; I came from commodities. Data flows very differently in CPG and FMCG than it does in the commodities sector. Data flows fast and freely in commodities, with real time reporting and predictions presented frequently. The supply chain of data in CPG is broken by comparison; it moves too slowly and it is far too ‘siloed’ to be as useful as it should be. This produces an
Hash: “I would have to agree with Dan; I recall wrangling data a decade ago and to be honest, when working with CPG brands, I find I am still doing that wrangling far more than I should be. One of the problems with data is that it can answer so many questions; you can always ask other questions and get other answers. There is certainly value in using data to know or understand what happened, but when it is used to predict what will happen next and what you should do next, then the real value is unlocked. The systems for
The Future of Data in FMCG and Retail panel included: Devan Hughes, CEO of online grocery shopping platform Buymie; Kevin McCarthy, CEO of RecommenderX; Hash Alsaidi, Head of Business Development with RecommenderX; and Dan Ryan, eCommerce and New Revenue Streams Manager with Unilever.
