Prepare Your Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) for a New Era in Retail
Today’s consumer products businesses face several of new challenges. Changing consumer demands are influencing product design and price optimization like never before. Meanwhile, the volatile economy necessitates unprecedented supply chain agility. Moreover, increasingly stringent food safety regulations mean compliance is not only more important, but also more difficult to achieve than ever.
To overcome these challenges, retail companies need to bring all of their PLM processes together in one place – with sophisticated ERP software that meets their specific needs.
Johnsonville, LLC
itelligence was an invaluable partner throughout the process, and Johnsonville benefitted from their leadership and methodical approach toward system upgrade, migration, and optimization.
Paul Townsend, Business Intelligence Team Coach, Johnsonville, LLC
Current Hot Topics for Consumer Products Providers
Demand Management
In today’s customer-driven market, effective demand management is absolutely essential. CPG companies require quick and easy access to relevant information to support profitability analysis and price optimization.
To guarantee accurate data, CPG companies need best-of-breed forecasting software. Technology aside, enterprises must not lose sight of their most important asset – their customers.
Supply Chain Agility
Good planning is critical to success, but quick, efficient re-planning is as just as important. With an increasing number of goods being transported daily, planning must be agile enough to respond to unpredictable events – such as delivery delays caused by traffic jams.
To accelerate decision-making, access to accurate real-time information via the Internet of Things is vital.
Food Safety
In an era defined by globalization and digitalization, businesses require a systemized food safety program. This should ensure the highest possible quality across all processes and timely compliance with global regulations.
To close the gap between incidents and corrective actions, companies in the food sector need a powerful in-memory platform, while innovative IoT capabilities can keep them ahead of competition.
Re-imagine Your Business and Learn How to Compete Successfully in the Digital Economy
Here you get to know what to do. Our expert, Don Mackenzie, gives useful advice about how to create consumer-driven buying experiences and how to maximize supply chain performance.
DownloadAre You Facing Similar Challenges in the Consumer Packaged Goods Industry?
- Is it increasingly difficult for you to cope with changing consumer demands and economic volatility?
- Are you struggling with shrinking operating margins due to growing global competition and fluctuating raw material prices?
- Are you suffering from compliance issues due to a dynamic global regulatory environment, as well as the necessity to mitigate operational risk and manage nonconformance?
- Are you familiar with all the compliance issues and food safety risks caused by a growing global economy?
- Are data granularity and transparency increasingly significant to your company?
If you are currently facing one or more of these challenges, we can help you rethink your processes.
Industry Specific Processes for Consumer Products
Inventory and Supply Chain Management
- Manage inventory in multiple, concurrent units of measure where needed, and allow seamless processing in all units (e.g. pricing at the in-process scale)
- Manage all inventory formats, including customer-owned, customer-pegged (promised), made-to-order (private label), quarantined, pre-approved by quality, etc.
- Manage all traceability issues, lot track & trace, quality recall management, etc.
Sales and Operations Planning
- Evaluate all options for improving the business
- Explore product mix, customer mix, supply planning with ingredients and dry goods sourcing, supply chain costs, and optimization of cost options to maximize margins
- Collaborate across all roles and functions to build the best plan
Product Lifecycle Management
- Streamline PLM from product inception to disposal – and align the business’ product portfolio to its objectives
- Transition from R&D to production in a well-planned, thoroughly coordinated manner
Pricing, Promotions, and Commissions
- Manage complex customer pricing including deep top-to-bottom logic to accommodate complex contractual pricing component details
- Assign prices based on individual product characteristics
- Handle promotional pricing issues connected to the physical logistics planning cycles (inventory, transportation, etc.)
- Implement automated price optimization based on demand
- Compensate broker/distributor channels accurately, with links to the end customer where needed
Multichannel Sales
One system to handle:
- direct
- indirect via brokers/distributors
- B2B and B2C e-commerce and online stores
Analytics & Yield Management
- Align analytics with strategic needs throughout your business process
- Manage yield throughout the buying, production, storage, and logistics execution processes – focus this effort on critical control points rather than inefficient all-encompassing scope
- Increase visibility to key performance areas for business leadership, real-time, in-process (no closes needed)
- Streamline end-of-month and end-of-year processes for fast, accurate completion
- Leverage imbedded analytics for real-time feedback on critical issues, such as yield
Profitability Analysis
- Start with the right level of granularity to allow management of margin at the right level of detail for your business – most consumer product businesses need visibility at the customer and product level of detail
- Slice and dice your profitability analysis to see the effects of customer/revenue and product/cost mix, logistics execution, and other factors influencing profitability – use this information to improve the sales and operations planning process
Our Consumer Packaged Goods Specialties
It's Often the Little Things That Make the Difference
We understand the subtle differences among the consumer products industry’s specialties. As such, we have developed a multitude of industry-specific products to provide our customers with tailored SAP solutions – whether on-premise, cloud, or hybrid.
Don Mackenzie, Consumer Products Industry Principal, itelligence Inc.
itelligence: Experience Meets Innovation in Consumer Products
As a trusted long-standing partner of SAP, itelligence is part of the development process for industry-specific solutions from the outset. Combined with over 25 years’ experience in SAP implementations across multiple industry segments, this gives us unparalleled knowledge of the consumer products industry. It also puts us at the forefront of innovation in the sector, meaning that as we grow, you grow.
What is more, thanks to our global presence, you can benefit from our best-in-class B2B and B2C solutions and round-the-clock consulting, wherever you are.
How Our Customers Benefit from Us
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