The digital landscape in the traditional and online retail space has undergone a far greater transformation in the last couple of years than in the past decade. Today nearly all FMCG companies in India have a sales force automation system or sales tracking software to gather retail intelligence from all touchpoints within the sales and distribution ecosystem.
But what do you do with all that data once you have it?
While brands are able to collect a lot of data, many do not have the ability to make judicious use of it and link it to marketing activities and business outcomes. Of course, MIS managers use excel sheets and a thousand formulae to cull out reports, but neither are these reports made in real-time nor are the sales leaders confident that the entirety of data is 100% authentic and error-free. Therefore, their GTM strategy continues to be a hit and a miss.
For e.g. a new product in kirana retail may not do well if the brand fails to utilize its data to understand which SKUs will sell better at which category of outlets. While this is one of the biggest pain points in traditional retail (kirana retail), in Modern trade too, the story is not very different. For e.g. some companies have sales officers who go to outlets and collate the attendance of promoters and merchandisers at the end of every week. This means that if a promoter is consistently absent, the company may not know until 6 days after. That is a straight 6 days loss of potential sales.
Read: Make your Merchandising reliable and smarter with FieldAssist Modern Trade Arsenal
Considering competition is fierce in most CPG categories, even one day without in-store sampling or promoter-led selling means more than just revenue loss. It may also result in ‘consumer erosion’; consumers who were originally your brand loyalists but because they have had to pick up another brand, they may or may not return to purchase yours again.
FMCG brands today realize the need for authentic, real-time retail analytics and verified intelligence to stay one up in the retail game. The potential of big data is such that it can change how businesses look at data today. In 2021, the global Big Data market size accounted for USD 163.5 Billion and is projected to occupy a market size of USD 473.6 Billion by 2030 growing at a CAGR of 12.7% from 2022 to 2030. In India, the analytics industry recorded a substantial increase of 34.5% on a year-on-year basis in 2022, with the market value reaching USD 61.1 billion.
Within the consumer goods industry, brands with the highest levels of digital and analytics maturity are creating significant value. These numbers by retail analytics clearly indicate how a data-driven sales strategy can become the biggest difference between a good year and a great year. Hence, the call to action is loud and clear: either fully tap into the power of digital and retail analytics, or get left behind
Retail Analytics Shaking Things Up in FMCG Retail
Being one of the fastest-growing sectors in the Indian economy, FMCG revenues saw a significant increase from the previous year, reaching 110 billion U.S. dollars in 2020.
Brands have highly differentiated product offerings, extremely discerning customers and the fiercest of competitors.
Keeping that in mind, medium and large-scale companies are significantly upping their spending on sales technology tools such as SFA (sales force automation), DMS (Distributor Management System) etc to gain a better foothold in the market, improve productivity levels, enhance distribution strategy and augment revenues.
Retail analytics from these solutions has greatly improved FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) retail sales in India by providing valuable insights into consumer purchasing habits at a retailer level, such as what products are being purchased, when they are being purchased, and at what price. This data can then be analysed to identify patterns and trends to make informed decisions on product assortment, pricing, and marketing strategies, leading to increased sales and profitability.
Making Sense of Data to Deliver Powerful Business Outcomes
FMCG industry operates through a wide distribution network and covers the urban and rural markets through kirana stores. These kirana stores make up nearly 80% of FMCG presence in India. Hence, understanding basket trends and consumer behaviour through structured data prompts businesses to achieve accurate insights to make informed sales decisions.
Touching upon critical areas of managing retail stores, let’s look at what analytics can do for the most featured business challenges:
Retail analytics solutions can uncover interesting statistics while providing direction in areas such as store layout, navigation, promotions, inventory management and strengthening store conversion rates. Marketers can intelligently determine the most profitable and satisfying experience for the end user.
Imagine an FMCG company with both physical and online presence. Combining sales data from its social media handles and offline presence and feeding it into a retail analytics solution, it can develop targeted social media and below-the-line campaigns to increase sales for product categories in which customers are already intrigued. This sounds very futuristic, but the truth is that businesses are already using smart analytics solutions to improve customer experience and reach them wherever they are, whether online or offline.
A massive rise in digital adoption, therefore, ensures that brands improve their point-of-sale marketing, customize products to suit regional preferences and simplify the retail ecosystem operations.
Through its various solutions available on an integrated platform, FieldAssist can assist CPG companies to collect, deconstruct and deploy retail intelligence to help them stay a couple of steps ahead of the competition- and a thousand steps closer to their consumers.
Watch how a brand became a category leader when millions didn’t know they need it!
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