The Consumer Packaged Goods and Retail industry is fragmented and disrupted. Consumer’s behaviors have changed. There are new entrants in the market. Industry CEOs have goals of innovation, growth, and efficiencies, but they cannot achieve these goals without a “cultural re-boot”. Industry leaders need to shift to being more open, innovative, and willing to collaborate (even with their competition) in order to survive. They need to pause their traditional investment focus on new teams, new data, & new technologies to refocus on cultural go-to-market transformations.
CPG+Retail companies live on terabytes and petabytes of data from dozens of sources (financial, supply chain, marketing, sales, retailers, manufactures, etc). This data is the gasoline that fuels the industry and enables these companies to make decisions. It gives these companies the opportunity to innovate and differentiate from the competition. The challenge is that the decision makers in these companies remain closed and are unwilling to commoditize and share this data. They tend to find, ingest, store, and process all of their data needs. This actually drives up the cost and minimizes the ability for these companies to meet their goals of innovation and growth.
The solution framework for this industry is to use the “move to cloud” as a means to transform to an open, collaborative culture as well as driving efficiencies in non-core competencies. The “move to cloud” need to be wholistic, not just an infrastructure project. It needs to include new corporate values, new business processes, and new go-to-market approaches. It needs to reward team members for building partnerships and sharing for the good of the industry. This solution framework takes leadership and a fail-fast, risk acceptance attitude.
The industry path forward might seem risky, complex, and non-traditional, because it is! Contact CPG Cloud Partners to discuss how their unique combination of experience, frameworks, and flexibility can help your company through this journey.
