FMCG
FMCG Manufacturers need guts of steel and
the wisdom of Gods to operate their businesses
at peak efficiencies.
The key challenges they face are multi-pronged and they all run deep:
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The Field Force teams work harder to achieve their targets towards the end of the month. As a result, FMCGs experience a sales spike during the last week or so. This further complicates inventory management.
- Although Field Force personnel plan their daily retailer visits, they have to make extra effort to remember which retailers to focus on and what conversations to have with each retailer. Overall, this process is steeped in inefficiencies.
- There is hardly any real-time clarity on what is selling at a product level (the exact variant or SKU, if possible, else the exact product) in each geography. This introduces Demand Variability which begins at the lowest node (retailer) and is amplified back at the HO level. By the time the aggregated data is available for the FMCG’s planners, the amplified variability can cause inaccurate forecasting.
- FMCG Manufacturers are mostly uncertain about what is happening at a retailer level. Is real-time shelf space allocated as per their sponsoring? Is the retailer keeping a healthy inventory of their products in order to ensure zero loss of sales? Lack of visibility into these key indicators adds to other existing ambiguities.
- Meanwhile, the Manufacturer has to also monitor the Distributor to ensure healthy stock inventory and constant focus on sales growth. This is easier said than done. In many cases, only the Distributor is privy to information relating to his retailer network. The Manufacturer gets little or no insight into this crucial data.
- Surprisingly, the Manufacturer has even lesser visibility into the implementation of their Merchandising tasks. This dimension of the business, too, needs to be brought within the HO’s field of vision.
Even domain leaders are looking for solutions that can address these challenges and be suitable for even semi-literate Distributors and Field Force personnel.
With that in mind, we created our Field Force Alignment software. It answers these challenges and more.