Consumer Goods Technology - October 2018 - 9

FI G U RE 9 :

Areas of Omnichannel Impact

Priorities for Change

Which functions are you modernizing to reflect the
omnichannel marketplace?

60%

Marketing
Sales

57%

Insights/analytics

57%

Supply chain

54%
14%

R&D
Manufacturing
Other

FI G U RE 1 0 :

9%
3%

Priorities for Change

Which areas has your company identified as priorities
for change?
59%

Business intelligence/data analytics
Supply chain

44%

Consumer marketing/engagement

44%
41%

New product development
Sales & operations planning

35%

ERP

35%

Retail execution

32%

TPM/TPO

32%

Manufacturing

29%

Customer management/collaboration
Other

26%
3%

partnering with third parties to help manage the overall infrastructure so that we can focus more on value-added activities."
The scope of these efforts is wide, with sales, marketing,
insights/analytics and supply chain all target areas for a large
portion of CG companies (Figure 9).
Kimberly-Clark is leveraging a SaaS-based cloud solution to
support the sales organization by providing critical data much
faster. "Enhancements or revisions to ... consumer promotion, trade
promotion, pricing action, and things like that are all driven to the
cloud," explains Belcastro. "Every Friday, I can download the latest
and greatest information, which is probably three days old at that
point. I used to have to wait a month or six weeks."

The wide range of modernization needs is also echoed in the
enterprise areas that CG companies have identified as priorities
for change (Figure 10). In keeping with the analytics focus, business intelligence is the most-cited area by a significant margin
(59%). Next comes supply chain and consumer marketing/engagement (both at 44%), followed by new product development
(41%) and sales & operations planning and ERP (35%).
At Smithfield Foods, the high priorities include becoming
more data-focused and analytics-driven, leveraging robotics to
automate more pieces of the supply chain, and adding product
lifecycle management solutions to support innovation in packaged and fresh goods.
"We're also building out collaboration so that many can innovate
and learn, and then have the structure to come back and share" their
experiences, Anderson says. "We could have people picking out 20
different devices to do scanning, or video monitoring, or analytics,
[but] we don't want that. We want one or two solutions that really
work for us and make it easy to consume for our business."
Conair's analytics efforts have covered social media and
digital marketing. "We've been doing that for over two years,"
says Jon Harding, the company's global CIO. "The next stage of
modernizing our consumer engagement is when a consumer has
a problem and reaches out to us. We're looking to modernize all
those interactions."

Tools of Change
There is no shortage of IT buzzwords in consumer goods, and
they're often accompanied by generous allotments of hype. But
many of these buzzy tools are delivering real value to help CG
companies transform (Figure 11).
Three technologies share the top tier of applications considered
critical to future success: mobile applications (55%), cloud-based
architecture (48%) and AI/machine learning tools (39%).
Mobile apps not only encompass marketing and social media
use cases, but also consumer product enhancements. ColgatePalmolive, for example, unveiled a smart electronic toothbrush
that uses artificial intelligence and a mobile app to provide realtime feedback about brushing activity.
"Everything's got to be mobile," says Conair's Harding. "Ecommerce sites obviously have to be responsive-designed so
they function well on mobile. We might have some products
that can be controlled from phones. But you have to be careful
that you don't go over the top."
The second tier of critical technologies involves tools whose
potential uses are still being determined: augmented/virtual
reality and robotics (18%), and blockchain and IoT (12%).
Samsung, as one example, uses VR to help consumers visualize TVs in their own homes. AR, meanwhile, has become a
common sales tool in the cosmetics category, where it's used

CONSUMERGOODS.COM | OCTOBER 2018 | CGT

Consumer Goods Technology - October 2018

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