Krishna Kothari | Bizom https://bizom.com Leaders in Sales Force Automation Wed, 29 May 2024 10:39:32 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://bizom.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Final-Favicon.png Krishna Kothari | Bizom https://bizom.com 32 32 179600903 Can AI replace FMCG salesmen? https://bizom.com/can-ai-replace-fmcg-salesmen/ https://bizom.com/can-ai-replace-fmcg-salesmen/#respond Mon, 03 May 2021 02:04:49 +0000 https://blog.bizom.in/?p=3591

Can AI replace FMCG salesmen?

by Krishna Kothari

May 3, 2021 | 01 min read

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Change is both scary and certain.

Technology is changing our lives daily and it is just a matter of time before every single job in the world will completely evolve. One of the largest workforces on the planet, other than the US military or Indian railways, is the sales force in the FMCG industry – that is millions of jobs. These sales teams are both critical and pricey for brands to reach the farthest corners of the world – so if the world is changing and robots might take over what will happen to these jobs – is this change good, bad, ugly?

If you look at the history of technological change, you can see that it follows natural evolution that has happened for millions of years which have enabled the human race to get better and better at solving problems and creating more and more opportunities. This same transformation continues with how brands go to market and get their products to 7 billion of us. The latest incarnation of this evolution is called eRTM – which is digitizing every touch point of your route to market to not only optimize your costs but to exponentially increase your reach by mining those billions of data points.

We @ Bizom are helping hundreds of brands to completely transform their go-to-market strategy with technology empowering every single stakeholder across the FMCG RTM ecosystem, from sales teams to distributors to revenue management teams to brand managers to retailers and many more.

This RTM approach encompasses brands deploying technology across the entire RTM landscape including:

1. Demand sensing – Ability to understand the demand from places where you have little reach to where you want to increase your category share, even from a dominant position by harnessing hyperlocal data such as population movement, socio-economic data, and localized ethnic demand, among 100s of other leading indicators. 

2. Demand generation – Engaging and empowering retailers across channels & territories with these insights and targeted promotions to help them identify the products they must stock and at prices they should sell to their consumers.

3. Demand capture – Leveraging advanced analytics algorithms to help retailers place orders or distributors replenish stock automatically via self-service B2B marketplace apps and interconnected platforms across the FMCG ecosystem.

4. Demand fulfillment – Interconnect every retailer, distributor, and 3PL / last mile delivery partner to fulfill this demand in hours – building an inventory-less ‘Just in the time supply chain.

As technology takes over millions of these tasks from humans, by automating a lot of what you do manually today or via disconnected independent systems, you will:

  • Generate capacity to reach billions of consumers you haven’t yet reached;
  • Elevate the roles of your teams from being order takers to change agents for your customers.

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Double Your FMCG Brand Sales in ONE Year With This Roadmap https://bizom.com/double-your-fmcg-brand-sales-in-one-year-with-this-roadmap/ https://bizom.com/double-your-fmcg-brand-sales-in-one-year-with-this-roadmap/#respond Fri, 12 Mar 2021 07:41:13 +0000 https://blog.bizom.in/?p=3467 Read more…]]>

Double Your FMCG Brand Sales in ONE Year With This Roadmap

by Krishna Kothari

March 12, 2021 | 01 min read

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A marketplace has become a holy grail for most CPG brands. It promises to cure all brand sales ailments and bestow immortality to brands. No, we aren’t kidding.

Today, consumers are fundamentally driving what products they want. In such a scenario, any CPG brand needs to move from push-based to pull-based distribution. It means moving away from a system where sales push products to one where retailers pull products based on customer demand. 

Consequently, a B2B eCommerce platform becomes an obvious choice. It enables brands to provide the best service to customers. It brings efficiencies in the business, whether in inventory held or margins to be made, that eventually transform into a pull-based distribution.

However, building and scaling a marketplace is no different from an Indiana Jones adventure. The journey is replete with ambushes set by wily adversaries. Allow us to present an Indiana Jones-like roadmap complete with smart strategies that can be deployed quickly to grow your sales explosively. 

So you have got your retail execution in place, but how do you go deeper? How do you optimise your RTM spending in the fragmented retail environment? How do you ensure that all customer personas are engaged through this channel? What should you do early in the journey? We know that all you want to do is focus on sales. But what you may not know is that it is simply a function of improving a set of key performance indicators.

Our integrated roadmap is a detailed quarter-by-quarter plan focused on key growth KPIs and supporting product capabilities for your marketplace. 

Before the Indiana Jones Roadmap

Aka Sales Growth Roadmap. Sales Growth is a function of a structured journey by improving key operational KPIs. However, before embarking on any improvements, your business ought to have already built capacity in the market. 

What is the pre-requisite market capacity?

You have already made a start in retail execution and have been focusing on market penetration. You have already gone through the process of acquiring retailers and encouraging them to come onto your platform. You have made concerted efforts across several channels. You are executing digital marketing and ATL activities to drive brand awareness of the channel. You have activated your sales teams to educate customers about the opportunities available to them and onboard them onto the platform. These are the first steps to explosive sales growth.

QUARTER 01

In the first three months, you have to make coordinated sales and marketing efforts to drive user onboarding, and user adoption, resolve objections, manage channel conflicts and ensure your customers know the benefits of the model.

The focus for any business is to drive volumes from any platform while bringing down costs. It enables you to pass on better margins to retailers. Consequently, your business model succeeds, and you achieve your forecasted quarterly GMV.

As we have mentioned before, increasing GMV is a function of improving operational KPIs. 

  • First, onboard retailers
  • Second, make sure the retailers are active on the platform for their weekly replenishments and continue driving volumes. So WAR (Weekly Active Retailers) becomes the most important KPI in this quarter. 

There are three things that retailers typically want: 

  • Assortment: To receive a large portion of the inventory from the most profitable channel
  • Pricing: Good margins across their basket and
  • Great service: Right products at the right time to avoid both over and under-stocking.

In short, a great set of products at good prices with great service. However, it’s impossible to achieve all three at the same time in the best possible way. 

To drive WAR, make assortment your primary focus in this quarter. Bring a great range of products to your platform. From a marketplace context, it means you might even choose to buy products from the open market in the short term. It won’t be profitable but to drive WAR you must target your investments here in this quarter.

Don’t fret about margins as much in this quarter – I know it’s hard but you need to get your CFO on your side. Also, don’t worry about the timeliness of your service as much  – but make sure that you drive 90%+ fulfilment. You may want to deliver on the same day or in 24 hours. However, as you are picking up products from the market, and reacting to demand without any historical demand data so achieving your target OTIF is going to be challenging. Just ensure assortment is there at competitive prices with 90%+ fulfilment. 

In this quarter, the KPI to achieve is WAR and the activity is assortment. 

QUARTER 02

Let’s all your efforts in the first quarter have got you 10,000 retailers on the platform, of which 2,000-3,000 are weekly active retailers. It means that now you’ve started to build a sustainable business. This momentum allows your category teams to showcase brand pull and onboard sellers which will help you address your availability and margin challenges. 

This quarterly focus also makes time for your category managers to onboard sellers and deal with the intricacies of onboarding them – legal requirements, margin negotiations etc. That is why onboarding sellers is one of the two things to focus on in Q2. 

The second quarter is also the time to focus on logistics. To ask, what is happening in the last mile? Hopefully, you have already got your basics right. It has given you an understanding of market demand. So in Q2, double down on logistics while working with a single partner or multiple or through your own fleet. 

The goal of this quarter is to focus on the next operational KPI – Turn Around Time (TAT) – moving you closer to your goal of same-day delivery. 

In this quarter, the KPI to achieve is TAT and activities to focus on are seller onboarding and last-mile logistics. 

QUARTER 03

You have weekly active retailers, a reasonable level of service, and a good range that has improved since onboarding sellers on the platform. You also have six months of historical data, which helps you understand the retailers’ demand and predict their baskets better. By working with the sales teams, you can gain insights into the share of retailers’ baskets. 

In Q3, you start focusing on the share of the shelf. So essentially, go after depth. In the first two quarters, you focused on acquiring width in the market and numeric distribution. Now, you can go after weighted distribution. You can acquire a larger share of the retailer’s basket because you have a good range in the marketplace. You’re also able to do this because you focused on seller onboarding in the previous quarter. 

It would not have been possible if you had tried to drive the share of the shelf too early in the process while buying from the market. You would have had too many losses to make good on them. By focusing on seller onboarding in the second quarter, you can manage your costs better. This is why your finance team will allow you to continue to focus on the share of the shelf and pass the promotions. 

So at the end of the third quarter, your service levels have improved, your assortment has gone up, and now you have a larger share of the retailer’s basket. You’re in this sweet spot of the best assortment, best pricing and best service to retailers. This is what retailers want.

Your successes in the digital channel have also boosted the outcomes of your sales and marketing digital campaigns. It also provides you with deeper insights into the retailers’ journey on the platform and understands what products work well. You have accrued valuable data by the end of the third quarter. 

QUARTER 04

The fourth quarter is all about Scale! Scale! Scale!. This quarter, you can drive scale because you have a good range, good pricing and good logistics. You’re able to push and grow that GMV. It is a combination of your digital marketing, continued nurturing from sales teams and targeted promotions. All your processes have become data-driven and geared towards building scale – what price to offer to which retailer and when. Now, you’re in a position to improve your margins. 

So at the end of year one, you have achieved the penetration you wanted. Beyond this point, there are other growth journeys that you can take. One could be about doubling down on optimisation since you have the data to look for insights. You can also optimise your channels – direct or distributor and reduce costs. You have more control over your RTM spend, bring savings from elsewhere and start growing this channel. 

You can apply this roadmap for every micro-market you want to scale your operations too. However, before you dabble across markets we recommend getting this rhythm right and then scaling even in parallel using this winning formula. 

Sales are quite simple – Disciplined focus on a set of KPIs and ruthless execution. Good luck on your digital RTM journey.

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Winning digitisation suite for a growing brand https://bizom.com/winning-digitisation-suite-for-a-growing-brand/ https://bizom.com/winning-digitisation-suite-for-a-growing-brand/#respond Mon, 18 Jan 2021 06:26:20 +0000 https://blog.bizom.in/?p=3380

Winning digitisation suite for a growing brand

by Krishna Kothari

Winning digitisation suite for a growing brand

Building a billion-dollar brand is no mean feat, especially for those mid-market brands who are looking to fight against global behemoths. They do not have the luxury or the financial muscle to have superstars on TV, creating the consumer pull. Nor can they drive availability at competitive prices because of their larger share of a retailer’s basket. They are also competing against 100s of other brands for 12 inches of prime shelf space in a store.

However, I have seen many brands win in such a competitive environment, and they all have two things in common – speed and agility. Brands that can change quickly and act fast can capture consumers’ hearts and minds, and drive sustainable growth. They ensure availability in the right store, for the right price, and at the right time, all the time. 

To make this happen, brands have to ensure that their RTM digitisation suite allows them to drive:

Integrated operations – Bring together stakeholders across the value chain onto a single platform. These stakeholders can be your sales teams, distribution partners, smaller rural sub-distributors and even retailers. It is the fastest way to get your products to consumers through a ‘Just in time supply chain.

Data-driven decisions – Drive data-backed decision-making by ensuring visibility of performance across the ecosystem. Ensure your teams can predict demand by channels, understand pricing elasticity across their range, identify whitespaces in their distribution and achieve the best numeric and weighted distribution.

Customer focus – Drive personalised engagement for your key retail outlets, ensuring that they have the right products and promotions for their consumers.

Intelligent execution – Provide every persona at every touchpoint with the insights to take the next best action. For example, a salesperson should be able to recommend what products the retailer should order. A distributor should understand the inventory levels needed to understock or overstock their warehouses. Retailers should have insights to price the products correctly for their consumer segments.

The ability of mid-market brands to execute an integrated RTM strategy at speed is paramount to their success. They need to look at a digitisation suite that allows them to bring together all of these capabilities in the shortest time possible, i.e., weeks instead of months and years as is the industry norm. 

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Would You do a Money Heist? https://bizom.com/would-you-do-a-money-heist/ https://bizom.com/would-you-do-a-money-heist/#respond Mon, 14 Dec 2020 02:30:44 +0000 https://blog.bizom.in/?p=3341

Would You do a Money Heist?

by Krishna Kothari

Money Heist

La Casa de Papel or Money Heist is one of the most successful TV series in recent times. It has a great mix of drama and thrill with characters designed as multi-dimensional and complementary antagonists and antiheroes whose moralities are ever-changing. It is not the best series I have ever watched, but it is undoubtedly a very entertaining one. With a whole lot of us confined to our homes in 2020, I hope you have had the opportunity to enjoy this series. If not, I would recommend it.

I believe there is a lot to learn from Money Heist.

The series was initially released in Spain in 2017 and was successful straightway with good ratings and more than four million viewers watching the first episode. It was almost double the number of the next highest-viewed station/show. However, over time, due to multiple things such as viewing slots, summer breaks, commercial breaks etc., the viewership halved, and ratings too declined.

It was at this low point that things changed for the series.

Netflix acquired the exclusive global streaming license, and with some changes, it launched the series on its platform in late 2017. Even without marketing and promotions, Money Heist became the most-watched non-English language series on Netflix within four months. Rest is history! Money Heist became one of the most-watched productions on Netflix of all time, regardless of language and was estimated to be watched by ~148 million subscribers by mid-2019.

In today’s new normal, CPG brands can learn a lot from Money Heist. Just creating a great product does not give you the $$$ that you feel you deserve, and sales teams will have many excuses such as seasonality, price, competition etc. etc. of why the sales are not where they should be. However, more often than not getting the distribution right will ensure that you maximise the returns for your creations even if it is not the best product in the eyes of certain consumers. It is the reason why many brands will spend ~50% of their top line on RTM.

However, the world has changed in 2020, and for you to get the growth you deserve, you need the right distribution channel for your products – just like Money Heist! It is especially true in emerging markets which bring the lion’s share of growth for CPG brands worldwide. For many progressive brands, B2B eCommerce has become the most heavily invested channel. They are investing to not only get their products listed on digital platforms but also transform their supply chain to provide the best-in-class service to their customers. Here are a few examples:

  • We acquired more than 50 brands to list their products on our B2B eCommerce marketplace (Distiman) in India since March 2020.
  • We are starting to replicate our success in the Middle East and Africa. We are launching our B2B Marketplaces in these regions at a blistering pace of three months.
  • Unilever’s Shikhar, an online ordering app for retailers, has scaled to over 500k outlets, and the brand is distributing its products through other B2B marketplaces across the world.
  • Pepsi, Coke, and AbInBev have taken similar strategies to scale their B2B eCommerce operations.

The adoption of this channel has accelerated at a rapid pace, and the industry has made 2-3 years’ worth of progress in just six months. Check out some of our learnings over the last four years of powering B2B eCommerce for some of the world’s best brands.

I would love to hear your views on what you are planning to do to come to the future.

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3 New RTM Strategies & 3 Market Trends That All Sales Leaders Should Know https://bizom.com/3-new-rtm-strategies-3-market-trends-that-all-sales-leaders-should-know/ https://bizom.com/3-new-rtm-strategies-3-market-trends-that-all-sales-leaders-should-know/#respond Fri, 10 Jul 2020 06:34:19 +0000 https://blog.bizom.in/?p=2764

3 New RTM Strategies & 3 Market Trends That All Sales Leaders Should Know

by Krishna Kothari

July 10, 2020 | 01 min read

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A Whole New World

Mask or no mask? Why is this a question? I suppose there will always be questions that we don’t understand. 

Having answers to relevant questions, however, is a forte of Bizom’s Retail Intelligence platform. Our platform powers the downstream supply chains of over 450 consumer brands. That gives us a ringside view to the trends in the consumer industry.

In April, we created a report on the impact of COVID-19 on retailer spending that aggregated these trends and it went viral. It was even covered in Business StandardET Prime, and YourStory.

That brings us to the present when businesses and demand are limping back to normal. We went back to our data and checked for new trends. Here are insights on how the market performed in the last 10 weeks.

METHODOLOGY

We developed this report by analyzing data from ~30% of the retail universe across 400 districts/2000 towns and cities of India, which covers a population of ~800+ million.

3 MARKET TRENDS TO KNOW

The demand data from the last 10 weeks points to the following market trends:

Buying patterns are changing: Distributors & stockists, and retailers are moving from fortnightly or monthly replenishment cycles to weekly cycles. This is driven by a range of factors including stock availability and the ability to give credit in the market among others.

Alternative distribution strategies are coming to the fore: Consumer brands are reinventing trade models to combat supply chain disruptions. They are investing in digital tech and analytics to power their strategic decisions and actions. 

Demand is varying by category and region: Demand is almost back to normal. However, packaged foods that saw a surge immediately after the lockdown was imposed, are down by 20%. But it is Beverages that have been hit the hardest with a 40% drop in sales during their peak season in April and May. Regions with fewer COVID-19 cases are doing better. In India, Southern regions have been doing better than the West which has the highest number of cases.

3 NEW & POPULAR RTM TRENDS

The value-based breakup of product categories

Brands are changing their RTM strategies to recover lost ground.

Simplification of the supply chain: Sales data for April and May pointed to brands consolidating their portfolio with fewer SKUs and limited new product launches. Thankfully, June data shows that the situation is almost back to normal and only ~10% down as compared to Feb 2020. The other trend is that customers are preferring lower-priced products and smaller, value packs. Brands are taking notice and consolidating their portfolio as shown in the graph above. 

Investments in Digital Transformation: Consumer brands are investing in digital technologies to bring more visibility into the supply chains and make data-backed decisions. They are digitising their entire value chains including channel partners, enabling B2B eCommerce, investing in remote retail execution, and more. 

Shift to hygiene products: Approximately 5-10% of our customers have launched hand sanitizers and masks to meet the new demand. Often, these hygiene products are outside the product portfolio of these brands. 

It’s our belief that consumption patterns will keep changing and brands will change their RTM models to keep pace with the market. If you want to know more, write to us for a copy of this report and to discuss specific insights for your category. Email: marketing@mobisy.com

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Bizom Multi-touch Platform Can Grow Your Sales Exponentially https://bizom.com/bizom-multi-touch-platform-can-grow-your-sales-exponentially/ https://bizom.com/bizom-multi-touch-platform-can-grow-your-sales-exponentially/#respond Mon, 08 Jun 2020 01:33:07 +0000 https://blog.bizom.in/?p=2650

Bizom Multi-touch Platform Can Grow Your Sales Exponentially

by Krishna Kothari

Bizom Multi-touch Platform Can Scale Customer Engagements Exponentially

Yes, you heard it right. In current times, the love and care that you can provide to your customers are directly proportional to lost sales. The time has come to move to a multi-touch approach to serve your customers and take market share away from the competition.

CPG sales and distribution in unorganized channels rely deeply on interactions between your sales, channel partners teams, and mom & pop retailers. If your business like so many other consumer businesses has been unable to enable retailers interactions, then it has experienced a massive disruption.

Enter the BIZOM MULTI-TOUCH platform that can help you to triple engagements with your customers by leveraging a range of digital TOUCHES. A well-orchestrated multi-touch retail execution has done wonders for many of our customers.

We have built a three-tier model to help brands to keep their engagement and sales up even in these times.

Tier-1: Instead of visiting a store, get your sales guys to do retail execution completely offline by leveraging Bizom’s retail execution solutions that integrate phone calls and WhatsApp. Our solutions are helping our customers to drive efficiency through the roof. Their sales teams are now able to double the number of calls to customers than face-to-face interactions.

Tier-2: Maximise ROI from the small sales window that your teams get with customers by focusing on what matters. Don’t just take orders; instead drive strategic decisions such as ranging, product launches, pricing, and much more.

Tier 3: Get your customers to be self-reliant through Bizom’s Retailer App so that they can order what they want, when they want and remain loyal to you.

Please look ahead to many more touches from us over the coming weeks to learn how you can get your brands to fly off the shelves with the BIZOM MULTI-TOUCH platform.

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How CPG brands need to pivot their RTM organisations in the new (ab)normal? https://bizom.com/how-cpg-brands-need-to-pivot-their-rtm-organisations-in-the-new-abnormal/ Tue, 26 May 2020 05:28:30 +0000 https://blog.bizom.in/?p=2606

How CPG brands need to pivot their RTM organisations in the new (ab)normal?

by Krishna Kothari

How CPG brands need to pivot their RTM organisations in the new (ab)normal

Over the last few weeks, we have all made changes to our lifestyles. Some of these changes will be temporary, a few will stay with us for a while and others might be permanent.

Organisations, big and small, across the planet are making changes too. Changes that are focussed on dealing with the health of their employees and ensuring business continuity. However, as lockdowns start to ease up, business leaders need to act now on what changes they will have to do to ensure smooth business operations in this new (ab)normal.

Brands to date have taken actions to ensure operational manufacturing lines and functioning supply chains to keep us all fed. This has alleviated some of the immediate pain, however, many pressures still loom large, including:

  • What will be the new operating model for on-field teams?
  • How to balance the books especially the RTM spend with high fixed costs
  • How to pivot the sales and distribution processes taking into account the changes in consumer behaviours
  • How to re-orient roles of sales and distribution teams as they serve their customers (retailers) with the right balance between “face-to-face” and “digital” touches

These challenges are being discussed in boardrooms across the industry as brands take a hard look at the role of their sales and distribution teams.

We believed that the role of a typical CPG salesman was going to change pandemic or not, however, this process has just been accelerated. Broadly there are three main changes that we foresee:

Specialism – Roles of different stakeholders in the CPG supply chain will get consolidated across different specialist buckets – Logistics, Merchandising, Order taking, business development etc. Specific organisations/individuals will drive these specialist roles across the ecosystem. For example, you will see a lot more partnerships where last-mile delivery will follow the Uber model, with these specialist firms delivering everything from shoes to food supplies to just a ride.

Upskilling – In this new normal the entire salesforce has to take on additional responsibilities. For example, salesmen will also be business development executives focussing on launching a new product in the market or increasing distribution as opposed to just order taking.

Digitalisation – A lot of the tasks that were typically performed by a human will get automated through bots, B2B commerce apps, automated visual merchandising models etc.

Leadership teams across Sales, Supply Chain, Technology and HR would need to come together and take the right steps to address this. Broadly these steps fall into the following two categories:

Rearchitect the sales and distribution model to create small but repeatable pieces of work which can be either automated (aka digitalisation) or outsourced to specialised firms. This will not only bring down the operational cost but also improve the speed at which brands are able to react. We are seeing many examples of this across the industry, albeit not in an organised/structured fashion to date.

Reorganising the RTM sales organisation into essentially a three-tier model:

Retail execution – This will include teams that will drive a range of retail execution tasks remotely e.g. over the phone via a call centre or supporting their customers to self-serve through B2B commerce platforms

Business Development – These will be the specialist teams that will drive more strategic tasks such as range selling, trade negotiations, NPD etc. These will be very data-savvy individuals who will ensure data-driven decisions with customers, helping them with the right product at the right price at the right location

Consultative sales – These will be the teams that will look after some of your largest customers typically a big key account and focus on creating new & innovative trade models. For example, selling your products through marketplaces or through alternative channels such as Uber or D2C in traditional trade-heavy markets etc.

Brands that are progressive and bold are already on this journey, where are you?

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Driving B2B Sales Growth Through RTM Innovation https://bizom.com/driving-b2b-sales-growth-through-rtm-innovation/ https://bizom.com/driving-b2b-sales-growth-through-rtm-innovation/#respond Fri, 01 May 2020 03:47:18 +0000 http://blog.bizom.in/?p=2499

Driving B2B Sales Growth Through RTM Innovation

by Krishna Kothari

Route-To-Market execution in emerging markets and on-trade channels is expensive. Unfortunately, the greater the reach the brands aspire to, the more expensive is the distribution. It can impact a brand’s ability to grow and thrive.

Consumer brands have to contend with several other debilitating factors that are integral to emerging markets. Distribution inefficiency is at the top of the list. Markets in emerging economies are primarily General Trade driven and are unorganized. There is a dearth of real-time data, and along with the low adoption of tech, capturing relevant data is even harder. It’s a vicious cycle.

Brands, therefore, suffer from the lack of visibility in unorganized channels including on-trade and traditional trade channels. Also, choosing the right distribution channel is as critical as pricing the product correctly. In emerging economies, there are several touchpoints before reaching the consumer. The quantum of errors increases at each touchpoint leading to inaccuracies in order fulfilment. Such inefficiencies in the supply chain only increase the cost for brands.

Such constraints within retail ecosystems of emerging economies make it exigent for brands to drive transparency in their supply chains. For instance, European stores fare far better than those in emerging markets. Developed markets have moved to direct distribution with technology enabling all forms of transactions between the brand and the retailer. This means, retailers typically don’t have to worry about overstocking and brands have visibility into POS sales and stocks at the retail store.

In emerging markets, brands are unable to offload costs because people are not buying. But the real barriers to gaining visibility come from the reluctance of distributors to share data. They fear losing autonomy or aren’t digitised to capture data. Without insight into tertiary sales, brands cannot forecast better for their downstream supply chain. It also impacts upstream supply chains where they cannot plan their production.

A Retailer App can plug the holes in visibility for brands. It allows retailers to send their orders directly to the brand. This demand data over time will help brands to forecast accurately, increase accuracies in order fulfilment, reduce delivery times and also better plan their production. It also empowers retailers to service their customers better by having the right products in the right quantity at the right time.

More currently, the Coronavirus pandemic has also brought the need for contactless direct distribution. This challenge can be addressed through a combination of Retailer App, Distribution Management Systems and Retail Analytics. The data aggregated from the retail intelligence platforms can help brands to predict demand, get a better share of shelves, empower sales reps with insights like with suggested orders, ensure planogram effectiveness on the field and others.

To summarise quickly, brands should aim at digitising retailers, connecting inventory positions across the supply chain, fulfil orders by integrating the supply chain through distribution solutions. Here are three simple steps to consider:

Step 1: Digitise retailers and distributors through simple integrated distribution solutions

Step 2: Start collecting data to gain visibility

Step 3: Use data to make more intelligent decisions. For e.g. what replenishment should be done both for distributors and retailers?

With such interventions, brands can bring analytical capabilities, especially forecasting in terms of inventory positions at every touchpoint in their supply chains, and understanding turnover ratios among others.

Bizom’s retail intelligence platform enables brands to drive effective distribution strategies through a range of AI & digital capabilities. Our solutions can help digitise the distribution network and optimise operations for brands. The following infographic says it succinctly.

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How Brands can Ensure Business Continuity with Direct Retailer Engagement https://bizom.com/how-brands-can-unlock-the-next-level-of-growth-with-direct-retailer-engagement/ https://bizom.com/how-brands-can-unlock-the-next-level-of-growth-with-direct-retailer-engagement/#respond Fri, 20 Mar 2020 12:30:24 +0000 https://blog.bizom.in/?p=2054

How Brands can Ensure Business Continuity with Direct Retailer Engagement

by Krishna Kothari

These are challenging times. COVID-19 is creating havoc for both the healthcare and consumer business sectors. Lockdowns in cities all over the world have additionally led to panic buying. Consumers fear a looming scarcity and a lack of access to food and daily supplies in the upcoming days. 

Consumption thus far is mostly driven by e-commerce and offline retail like supermarkets, convenience stores, grocery stores, corner shops, etc. But brands also have to comply with COVID-19 safety measures, including social distancing. That has an impact on how much of their field force can service retail in India. Still, brands cannot allow stock-out conditions for their products. Their ability to stay in tough times will impact their brand loyalty in better times.

Can brands afford to keep their retailers –the face of the brand to the consumer – at arm’s length? Especially when it’s not just possible but essential to connect with retailers directly.

Why do brands continue to communicate with retailers through multiple layers of channel partners and sales reps? What would be the business impact if brands could talk directly to every one of their retailers, conveying product information, training, promotions, and discounts and accepting orders, feedback, and queries first-hand and in real-time?

Enter Retailer App – The one-stop solution to driving growth within your friendly neighbourhood retailer.

Enable Retailer E-commerce: Servicing all the retail stores in a country including supermarkets, convenience stores, grocery stores, etc. can seem like a daunting task for any brand. But what if you could enable retailers to order directly, circumventing the need for the large field force – an Amazon for retailers?

Merchandiser vs Machine:  Ensure availability, visibility & POS merchandising compliance by enabling the retailer to click a picture and let our Image Recognition Algorithm do the rest. Now all your merchandiser or mystery shopper needs to do.

Trade Promotions & Retailer Loyalty: Run retailer-specific promotions and discounts. You now have the power to run targeted advertising campaigns across all your retailers to increase and maintain your brand presence. Brands can now run multi-tier loyalty programs with in-app redemptions and rewards.

New Product Launches: 80% of product launches fail. Period. By directly engaging with all your retailers, you are now armed with a powerful tool that enables you to reach out and market your new products across every retail store increasing the chances of success at every product launch.

We found that brands that used our retailer-facing application to establish a direct line of communication with retailers were able to improve their mutual relationship and collaboration dramatically and deliver better customer service. It, in turn, helped brands cut costs and increase sales and market share.

To know more write to us at marketing@bizom.co.uk

Why then, in a world where engaging directly with consumers is not just possible but essential, are brands still content with keeping their retailers –the face of the brand to the consumer – at arm’s length?

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How we can help you get closer to the consumer! https://bizom.com/how-we-can-help-you-get-closer-to-the-consumer/ https://bizom.com/how-we-can-help-you-get-closer-to-the-consumer/#respond Sat, 20 Oct 2018 11:28:53 +0000 http://blog.bizom.in/?p=1943

How we can help you get closer to the consumer!

by Krishna Kothari

The consumer is probably the most important word in ‘Consumer Product Goods’ or CPG companies and it has never been more true than today. As consumer goods companies try to drive growth in emerging markets or maintain market share in mature markets, the most important task that they have at hand is ‘Consumer engagement’ – it is both a challenge and an opportunity to ensure their survival. The brand equity that CPG companies are used to, is becoming less and less influential, especially with the newer generation of consumers.

As these consumer dynamics evolve, the way we make our purchase decisions are changing. The factors that are more important to us vary widely which means that engaging with consumers in their voice is even more critical. Hence it is no surprise that every single consumer goods company, in fact, every customer-centric organisation, is trying to get closer to the consumer. We all are trying to get to know our consumers better, get our products or services in front of the right consumer at the right time at the right place and to top it all, try to do this all of the time – No mean task!

I have seen many strategies being applied to achieve this – Social media engagement, Consumer insight-driven targeting, AI-powered consumer engagement, beautifully designed digital marketing, neighbourhood pop-up stores, in-store marketing and many more. All of these are great techniques and the innovations are getting more and more sophisticated by the day.

However, the progression of these capabilities is not directly proportional to the impact it is having on consumer engagement. In fact, due to the advancements in technology, you and 1000s of your competitors are trying to engage with consumers in every way imaginable, making it very crowded and confusing for consumers.

I recently realised how many companies were trying to target me when I received over 100 GDPR e-mails – asking for my permission to use my data. A large majority of them I did not wish to engage with and this included a myriad of marketing agencies, a lot of them probably working for you. However, this does not mean that I would not like to have the exact offer I want when I want it and at the price, I am willing to pay – of course, I do, but who doesn’t?

So what do you do, I do not profess to know all the answers but I would like to share another approach which we are using successfully to help our clients and which may work for you too.

Okay, so let’s think about this a bit differently. Imagine that on a page you have the workflow that describes how your products get to your consumer. At the bottom of the page is you, creating some of the best products in the world and at the top of the page is your consumer. This consumer is getting your product after it has gone through many hops across your supply chain through the hands of your partners, their partners, their partners’ partners and ultimately the retailers with whom the consumers deal on a daily basis.

In my experience, the consumer goods industry has spent the better part of the last 30 years perfecting this distribution model and I believe has the best know-how of how it works. I do not mean logistics, I am sure DHL, FedEx and many others would claim to be the best at that and they probably are.

However, a consumer goods supply chain involves many different players from distributors, sub-distributors, stockists, carry forward agents, small retailers, large retailers, independent retailers, logistics companies and many more. It’s a complex model of how this trade works. Now multiply this model by the number of countries you operate in and in some cases this may also change based on the category you are in e.g. Ice creams.

This complex model is what most CPG companies have been managing for many years, building networks and strong trade relationships.  CPG companies hence have a level of control in this that they do not yet have in targeted consumer marketing. That relationship string was always held by the retailers who talk to the consumers daily.

We believe that you need to leverage these retailers and your trade partners far better to reach your consumers. Now I accept that the large supermarkets of the world will not want to give that control to you – I agree that you probably won’t be able to influence Walmart or Tesco of the world to hand you over this relationship.

However, I do not believe that this should be something you should be overly worried about as most of your growth is coming from emerging markets where traditional trade is far bigger than modern trade. Even in developed markets, the shift to convenience is helping to drive growth. In both of these channels, you can and must influence. In the UK influencing 40,000 traditional trade retailers is a far manageable challenge that influences 50 million of us consumers.

We are already achieving this with our ‘Retail Marketplace platform – Distiman’ by getting brands a step closer to their consumers. We believe our tech can help you achieve this in any market.

So how can we help you achieve this? Here are three approaches that some of our clients have done over the last 12 months

Leverage your home advantage

The journey for some of our clients started when they directly engaged the retailers with their branded app – shifting a lot of retail execution and merchandising directly into the hands of retailers. This is allowing:

  • Retailers order directly from the brand, order as frequently as they need and get it delivered as per demand. This is driving growth for the retailers as they can have a wider range, higher stock turns and all that with reduced capital investment.
  • Brands are also able to establish a relationship directly with the retailers and get them to be part of their loyalty scheme. They are having deeper engagement by appropriately incentivising them e.g. with app-only offers. This in turn is driving growth for them by having a much larger share of shelves and ensuring that they win in their focus SKUs.

Leveraging this in areas where our clients have the strongest distribution network has minimised their risk and allowed them to establish this new operating model. One of our clients, a global eye health products company, has launched this in 10,000 stores and is already achieving great results.

Play in the entire market

The key to keeping the retailers that you have recruited engaged in this manner and recruiting more is to make their lives easy and create an environment where they will thrive. This will only happen when the mom & pop store around the corner can order anything that they want from this marketplace app and not just products from a single brand. Extending the app is key so that it becomes “The Retail marketplace for retailers”.

One of our clients, a very large global beverage company, has taken the plunge to be part of a new marketplace and exploit this new form of trade collaboration. This is taking them to an additional 20,000 stores and increasing their penetration and growth with reduced investment.

We are running this as a separate business and can scale this platform with you too. By being a core player in this marketplace you will benefit from everybody benefiting and you start to play in the entire ecosystem.

Engage with the consumers

Last but not least now you have 1000s of retailers as your extended consumer service team. You are now able to drive consumers to the POS through all of your great marketing and analytics efforts. Also, you can enable these stores to provide a service or a subscription to the consumers. On average, today in the world a traditional trade store covers about 250 consumers and these stores can now help you to engage them using our tech.

We have a big dream to drive this change and make it a level playing field for the traditional trade retailers and you can benefit from this as much as they can. We are running at a million miles per hour to get there and get there we will.

The question is do you want to be a part of this journey with us?

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Rooting back to the Volume > Value era: 2024 CPG trends

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