Asia Pacific has the potential to become the largest e-commerce market globally. Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) companies need to consider how it can make further inroads in this fast-growing market through digital marketing.
Social media and digital marketing present these companies with an unprecedented opportunity to listen and engage on a deeper level with consumers.
CPG executives in turn need to adopt a “digital mindset” that reflects where consumers are going with personal technology, and be committed to leverage technology to achieve operating excellence and marketplace success.
Technology plays a vital role in helping companies understand the changing demographics in mature markets, reach consumers in high growth emerging markets and manage the complexity of multichannel commerce.
With these opportunities in mind, Accenture has crafted its 2013 Technology Vision to identify key technology trends CPG companies can exploit to create sustainable value and respond to current challenges in a cost-effective way.
CPG companies must aim to provide a user experience that is both compelling and personalised, to move beyond transactions and form digital relationships. By aggregating and exploiting the valuable data they have collected across all interactions and communications with their consumers including loyalty programs, social media sites and contests, CPG companies can now establish one-to-one relationships with their consumers while simultaneously have the ability to scale up its communications to all fans of their brands.
Many CPG companies will admit to being overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data they have. What they need is the right data in the right place at the right time. It is hence necessary to add data collection as a new requirement within the software procurement process. Such analytic capabilities when defined upfront during the system road-mapping process will result in a data supply chain where applications not only serve users but also the business as it searches for answers and insights to the organisation’s most pressing questions.
Recognising that each insight has a limited shelf life of relevance and meaning, CPG companies can leverage new technologies such as in-memory computing, data appliances and NoSQL databases to accelerate their move from insights to action.
Collaboration and social technologies need to be embedded into the fabric of the enterprise and integrated into existing business processes. Significant value is created when social-based processes support cross-functional partnerships between IT and marketing and sales teams, or R&D and product development.
The need for CPG companies to integrate and analyse data from multiple sources throughout the value chain has made software-defined networking (SDN) a valuable tool. SDN can radically increase the flexibility of the businesses and their IT teams, replacing a rigid network of mutually-dependent switches and interfaces with a dynamic environment. This change is especially important for mature CPG companies hobbled by legacy systems that are inflexible and difficult to scale and integrate new applications.
Cyber defences where companies guard the value of customer, channel and financial data remain important, but such compliance satisfies only the minimum standard. There is a need to adopt a more active, risk-based approach to security management which embeds analytics-driven event detection and reflex-like incident response to aid companies in assessing the business risk of security threats and respond appropriately.
Companies have only begun to scratch the surface of the potential of cloud-based computing solutions. Cloud services can be used to encourage shoppers to gather data about product displays that companies cannot get from retailers. Savvy CPG companies have used the cloud to power core business processes including cross-device content access and sharing, supply chain visibility, inventory management, collaboration and to build brand awareness.
Maximising the use of emerging technologies will help CPG companies achieve business goals such as reaching emerging markets, quickly launching and refining brand strategies to win the war in the store and tightly managing margins in an era of commodity price volatility. With a digital mindset, executives will be able to anticipate and respond to on-going technology-driven disruptions while building a competitive differentiation.
By Won-Joon Lee
Managing Director-Products, Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN)