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The digital terrain of both traditional and online retail has experienced a more profound metamorphosis in the past few years than over the past decade. Nowadays, nearly all CPG companies in India employ a sales force management system to amass retail intelligence from every interaction within the sales and distribution ecosystem.
While brands manage to amass copious amounts of data, many cannot employ it wisely and associate it with marketing initiatives and business results. Indeed, MIS managers use Excel sheets and countless formulas to extract reports. Still, these reports are neither real-time nor do sales leaders have complete confidence in the data’s authenticity and absence of errors. As a result, their go-to-market (GTM) strategy remains hit-or-miss.
For instance, a new product in kirana retail may not perform well if the brand fails to exploit its data to discern which SKUs will excel at which type of outlets. That is a significant pain point in traditional retail (kirana retail), but in modern trade as well, the narrative is similar. For example, some companies have sales officers who compile the attendance of promoters and merchandisers at the end of each week. That implies that if a promoter is consistently absent, the company might only become aware six days later. That’s a direct loss of potential sales for six days.
Given the intense competition in most CPG categories, even a single day without in-store sampling or promoter-led selling signifies more than just a loss in revenue. It could also lead to ‘consumer erosion’; consumers initially loyal to your brand may opt for another brand and may or may not revert to purchasing yours.
Today’s CPG brands acknowledge the requirement for accurate, real-time retail analytics and validated intelligence to gain an edge in the retail game. Big data will revolutionize how businesses perceive data today. The global big data industry was valued at $163.5 Billion in 2021 and is set to reach a market size of $473.6 Billion by 2030—growing at 12.7% from 2022 to 2030. In India, the analytics industry recorded a robust increase of 34.5% yearly in 2022, with the market value peaking at $61.1 billion.
Brands with the highest digital and analytics maturity levels generate substantial value within the CPG sector. These numbers by retail analytics emphatically demonstrate how a data-driven sales strategy can mean the distinction between a good and a great year. Therefore, the call to action is unambiguous: harness the full power of digital and retail analytics or risk being left behind.
One of the fastest-growing market segments in India, CPG revenues experienced a considerable surge from the preceding year, hitting 110 billion U.S. dollars in 2020.
Brands boast highly differentiated product offerings, extremely discerning customers, and the most ruthless competitors.
With that in mind, medium and large-scale companies are markedly amplifying their expenditure on sales technology tools such as SFA (sales force automation), DMS (Distributor Management System), etc., to secure a stronger foothold in the market, elevate productivity levels, optimize distribution strategy, and boost revenues.
Retail analytics solutions have significantly enhanced CPG retail sales in India, supplying crucial insights into consumer purchasing behaviors at a retailer level, such as what items are being bought, when they are being bought, and at what cost. This data is then scrutinized to discern patterns and trends, empowering businesses to make well-informed decisions regarding product selection, pricing, and marketing tactics, thus driving higher sales and profitability.
The CPG industry operates through a broad distribution network, spanning urban and rural markets via kirana stores. These kirana stores account for approximately 80% of the CPG presence in India. Therefore, interpreting basket trends and consumer behavior through structured data enables businesses to garner precise insights for well-informed sales decisions.
Focusing on the vital aspects of retail store management, let’s explore what analytics can offer for the most common business challenges:
Business Challenges
Due to heavy reliance on manual and secondary information, businesses have limited information on the variants and sizes of value packs their customers desire to buy during special occasions.
How Analytics Solves It
The accurate analysis supplies marketers with store-specific, region-specific, and product-specific performance data, enabling rapid decisions on adjusting pricing, promotional, or placement strategies.
Business Challenges
Consumer data doesn’t mirror buyer needs, preferences, and feelings toward a product or promotion. Consequently, sales strategies can’t incorporate such essential variables during the planning phase.
How Analytics Solves It
Data-driven applications provide a history of customer responses to promotions, giving marketers insight into individual preferences and helping develop targeted strategies to stimulate better buying behavior.
Business Challenges
Determining demand shifts or sales slow-downs is challenging due to the lack of verified data.
How Analytics Solves It
Data analytics assist retailers in reacting promptly to competition and aiding SKU allocation by detecting signs of demand shifts and other economic factors.
Business Challenges
Route optimization remains elusive since CPG brands lack visibility into the field force movement, resulting in lower productivity levels.
How Analytics Solves It
An automated sales force tool that oversees, manages, and optimizes on-ground sales operations while capturing real-time field data.
Retail analytics solutions can reveal intriguing statistics while guiding store layout, navigation, promotions, inventory management, and enhancing store conversion rates. As a result, marketers can intelligently establish the most profitable and satisfying experience for consumers.
Consider a CPG company with both a physical and online presence. By merging sales data from its social media platforms and offline presence and inputting it into a retail analytics solution, it can create targeted social media and below-the-line campaigns to boost sales for product categories that interest customers. While this seems quite futuristic, the reality is that businesses are currently employing intelligent analytics solutions to enhance the customer experience and reach them wherever they are, be it online or offline.
A significant surge in digital adoption guarantees that brands enhance their point-of-sale marketing, tailor products to suit regional preferences, and streamline retail ecosystem operations.
Through its suite of solutions available on a unified platform, Basiq360 can support CPG companies in collecting, dissecting, and applying retail intelligence, helping them stay a few steps ahead of the competition—and a thousand steps closer to their consumers.
