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Is Your Business eRTM Ready?
by Mischelle Rebello
March 25, 2021 | 01 min read
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Last week, Kunal Shah of CRED & Freecharge fame ran a LinkedIn poll asking folks if they liked working from home. Of the approximately 41,000 votes, 55% voted “Love it”!
In what could be possibly a more rational world, bestselling authors Lindsay McGregor and Neel Doshi surveyed 20,000 workers worldwide between 2010 and 2015. They “conducted scores of experiments to figure out what motivates people, including how much working from home plays into the equation.” They found that working from home significantly reduced motivation levels.
The classic Catch-22 situation poses tough challenges for CPG leaders. With the second wave of COVID-19 raising its ugly head in emerging markets, there’s a deep sense of deja vu. Is the clock turning back to April 2020 when supply chains broke down, CPG operations stalled, and outlet shelves ran empty?
Luckily for us, almost all CPG businesses are prepared with their contingency plans. But are our businesses as disruption-resistant as we think them to be?
Last year, the business landscape evolved, and so did the execution models. It became evident that D2C powered by B2B eCommerce Marketplace is the future of CPG in emerging markets.
Retailer automation is the frontrunner of the eRTM strategy of brands. It enables retailers to send their orders directly to brands which in turn brings enormous visibility. By directly engaging with retailers, brands can accurately predict demand and reap the benefits of advanced analytics – demand forecasting, merchandising through image recognition, distribution planning, and supply chain optimisation, among others.
With access to data, a brand’s salespeople move away from transactional interactions to actively engage in business development and consultative sales. The upskilling of its sales team only benefits the brand and its bottom lines.
eRTM or digitised route to market empowers CPG brands to harness the power of advanced analytics, AI and ML to provide market context or insights automatically. Brands no longer need data scientists to pour over numbers for hours to find relevant insights.
At the height of the lockdown in 2020, Unibic, a mid-market biscuits and cookies brand, relied on Bizom’s advanced analytics tools to identify 250 odd relevant outlets in micro-markets to generate 1.8L sales within days.
At Bizom, we had already been powering RTM transformation for brands for years. Unfortunately, it took a disaster for brands in emerging markets to fully buy into the RTM digitisation story. In our study of the market, while many CPG brands are digitising their supply chains, few take a holistic approach to it. It comes from integrating tech at all the major touchpoints of the supply chain and ensuring teams make data-driven decisions for market penetration and expansion. Here’s how an eRTM landscape would look for your brand.
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This story underscores a vital lesson: artificial intelligence must be complemented by real intelligence.
