The landscape of the consumer packaged goods (CPG) market is rapidly changing. According to McKinsey, the growth model for CPG has shifted from the big companies who have a controlled message, shelf space and supply chain to one where speed and accuracy beats all. Today’s CPG growth model is based on fragmented channels, democratization of choice, and better access to the supply chain. In the future, McKinsey sees this model shifting further to reward those CPG businesses who can marry scale with agility.

In order to move in that direction, it’s critical that CPG businesses find ways to unify the explosive volumes of data as well as utilize analytics to generate accurate insights for key decision makers. CPG companies need to enable insight at the speed of business.

The Biggest Current Challenges

Perhaps one of the biggest current challenges for CPG and many other industries is the volume, growth and quality of consumer data. According to TechJury, poor data quality costs the U.S. economy up to $3.1 trillion annually and roughly 95% of businesses say the need to manage unstructured data is a significant issue.

Gigabytes of consumer data are generated every second through customer relationship management, enterprise resource planning, and point-of-sale systems. Add to that, data from loyalty programs, competitive analysis and omnichannel systems. 

The infrastructure to store, manipulate and manage this massive and growing amount of data is not trivial. It requires a new automation platform to not only manage but govern how the data is collected, organized, and accessed by CPG business decision makers.

The majority of CPG businesses are struggling with siloed repositories where data is essentially stuck and unusable for those who need to access it. This, in addition, causes duplicative and overlapping data streams as well as quality issues and missing information.

All these issues make accessing the data a significant challenge. On average, it takes five days to obtain an answer to a data-related business question. The multistep process at most CPG companies involves a discussion between a business professional and a data analytics expert on what information is needed and then a lengthy and labor-intensive effort to modify basic queries and reports to deliver a single answer.

In addition, legacy-based analytic solutions are by nature less predictive than cloud-based solutions. Legacy systems tend to retrieve information from single data sources using antiquated methods. The lack of complete sales data creates holes in visibility and coverage while the lack of rich model data inputs generates interpretation gaps.

Using AI/ML to Accelerate Growth

Today’s artificial intelligence and machine learning technology has the capability to boost both the speed and accuracy of unifying and accessing those massive repositories of consumer data.

Hypersonix helps clients access that data and generate more complete insights into consumer behavior and decision making. Its solution is based on a unified data lake, which creates a better foundation for enterprise intelligence and advanced analytics.

[Suggested Read: Getting Data-based Answers Now]

Unlike most intelligence and analytics platform, Hypersonix manages the unified data lake for our clients, easing maintenance and governance while lowering infrastructure costs. CPG companies in turn can use Jarvix, Hypersonix’s natural language user interface, to gain fast, simple access to that data for non-technical business professionals almost instantly.

The AI-led analytics system delivers more accurate insights because it can frequently analyze business results in real-time for continuous learning. The system can not only leverage all the unified data inputs to better explain results but can actually pre-run thousands of models to simulate business decisions and build confidence in the results.

Business professionals will make smarter day-to-day decisions with more confidence because the AI/ML analytics will generate more complete, efficient and timely insights versus what we see in most companies today. 

See for Yourself

If you’re intrigued, contact our team for a live demo of the Hypersonix product, which uses actual data to illustrate how the solution delivers what we promise. We also work with our clients to build a pilot project first, with a limited amount of data and targeted application of our AI and ML tools, so you can generate real results before making a major commitment.