How Decision Intelligence Helps CPG Companies Deliver on Brand Promises

Consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies are under a great deal of pressure to keep pace with customer expectations and deliver on brand promises in a turbulent marketplace.

First of all, the CPG space is uniquely prone to external factors beyond their control. For firms with large and fragmented supply bases, supply chain disruptions caused by the global pandemic, geopolitical tensions, or natural disasters can have a tremendous impact on the ability to deliver.

Second, consumer expectations in the digital age have changed dramatically. Today’s consumers expect more from the brands they interact with – whether from a marketing personalization standpoint, a product personalization standpoint, or simply the way they interact with those brands. As a result, competition has become stiff as brands now have to keep up with the innovations of e-commerce giants such as Amazon and smaller, but disruptive, digital-native startups.

The third challenge that organizations face is operational: the ability to hire and retain talent. Companies are faced with the challenge of retaining experienced decision makers in critical roles such as planning, while the impacts of an aging workforce and the Great Resignation pose a threat to the store of institutional knowledge that ensures business continuity.

Consider a scenario where there is a sudden, unpredictable increase in demand for a product after an influencer endorses it on social media. Alternatively, imagine an unforeseen delay (like the 2021 Ever Given incident) that keeps product from reaching store shelves. For each of these situations, decisions have to be made quickly to meet demand or minimize the negative impacts of a disruption, respectively. How can supply chain planners ensure they can make an accurate decision quickly enough to ensure that outcome?

In order to keep up with the rapid shifts in the industry, CPG companies are leveraging Decision Intelligence to help them make fast, accurate decisions. Cognitive computing and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies rapidly analyze data and recognize patterns and opportunities to improve performance more quickly than is possible when relying solely on human “compute power.”

Decision Intelligence offers CPG companies the agility and scale that is critical to remaining competitive today. Organizations can move beyond relying on dashboards and spreadsheets, and siloed business processes, as thousands of decisions can now be digitized, augmented, and automated across the enterprise. In addition, Decision Intelligence gives managers and executives the ability to manage portfolios of thousands of products with their existing teams, increasing their effectiveness by enabling them to address more decision-making opportunities each day.

With decision automation, CPG leaders have more opportunities to focus on high-level strategic planning, while companies gain efficiency and agility even in the face of disruptions – meaning they will be better able to maintain on-time deliveries, stocked shelves, and a loyal base of happy customers.

Watch our on-demand webinar, “Delivering on CPG Brand Promises with Decision Intelligence” to learn how Aera is helping teams move away from continuous “firefighting” to achieve greater agility and resilience.