Sales Insights: Turning Data Analysis Upside Down

Manufacturers are aiming to lead the Thought Leadership Agenda with retailers, especially at a time with great change – inflation, rising costs and HFSS on the horizon - and to do this they need meaningful insights.

The challenge is finding meaningful Insights from Continuous FMCG Data when you are trying to combine multiple databases across several Categories covering both Retail Data, Consumer Panel and Out of Home.?This involves understanding the different data sets, how to extract the relevant data required and then understanding the data. This is before you analyse the data and look for meaningful insights, which is a timely process that needs a certain skill level.

Large Companies employ teams of insight specialists to undertake this work. Marketing Week has recently highlighted that a third of brands have been hit by a data and analytics skills gap, so there is currently a shortage of people with this skill level. ?Large Companies also use their market research agencies to do a lot of the work through regular reports or specific briefs.

In order to find meaningful insights, you would start at the category total to assess how is the category performing and then look at segments driving the category. You would also assess which individual manufacturers and brands are driving the category and why. ?The traditional way is to work on a funnel basis starting wide and then narrowing this down to identify key manufacturers, brands and sku's. The final step would then analyse why these changes are occurring – pricing, promotions, distribution etc.

Artificial Intelligence technology is being used in many industries. In seen as a “game changer “ in the?automotive?Industry with the industry predicted to spend $7.8 billion on big data solutions in 2025. It is well publicised that it is being used in autonomous & connected vehicles. It also being used in production of cars, R&D, customer analytics, and online. Drug Discovery is using AI technology in Pharmaceuticals. E-Retailers such as Amazon are using AI to make recommendations on what we should purchase. Finally, in FMCG Analytics we are seeing the technology becoming valuable.

The traditional approach of data analysis it being turned on its head by AI-Powered Analytics. Instead of spending days trying to get meaningful insights these can be provide to you with a few minutes through the Executive Summary that everyone wants. This outlines Key Insights and can unlock hidden revenue opportunities. It can provide detailed reasons on what is driving an individual manufacturer or brand. This is because it is carrying out millions of calculations and it may well reveal insights that a human would find hard to uncover.

Faster insights allow more time to be spent investigating these and working out how to gain competitive advantage. It means that if you are having a team meeting you can get an answer to a question in a few minutes, rather than having to wait for someone to investigate it and come back in a few days. This allows individuals to respond faster both externally with retailers and internally. It also enables them to influence the retailers with thought leadership through meaningful insights.

As people’s job roles expand with omni-channel responsibility, then there will be more complexity and people will need more skills. AI-Powered analytics will reduce this complexity by providing the key information needed for everyone in an organisation – both light and heavy users, which will enable individuals to help companies improve performance in the post-Covid world.