Top 2011 Trends for the CPG Industry
As we embark upon 2011, we are optimistic about the direction the CPG industry is heading. Despite the economic downturn and the slow recovery; we are seeing continued success with our CPG clients. CPG companies have had to come to terms with a new breed of shoppers- she is smarter about and where and what she buys, more value conscious and relies extensively on social media and mobile devices for her everyday needs. Over the last year, as we listened to our Clients, their understanding of this new consumer has and will drive some of their most significant investments in 2011 and beyond. following are some of our top predictions for the CPG industry in 2011:
· There will be investments in small scale, high impact innovation. Mobility, to better engage with consumers, build brand perception, assist making buying decisions in the home, at the store and at the shelf will be a key area of innovation.
· Multichannel strategies will become more important. Retailers/CPGs will look to mobility to engage consumers before, during and at time of purchase using various tactics from social communities, mobile couponing and promotions.
· Private label brands will continue to see an uptake. Consumers are looking at in-store/private label brands more favorably. CPGs will continue to invest in product development and innovation to better the value perception of their brands and the product segments they currently command. This will enable them to better compete with in-store brands.
· Investment to extract value from CPG companie's core transaction processing systems will increase - Over the last 5-7 years, CPG companies have made investments in globalizing and standardizing their core systems.. Many of these companies will not want to extract value out of these investments and hence Business Intelligence, Analytics and Business Process Management will see investments in 2011
· Expand the functions that could be "shared serviceable" - Analytics, MDM and TPM will be prime suspects for shared services. . CPG companies will move beyond the usual suspects of Ffinance, Accounting and HR . to areas like MDM, TPM and Analytics. Processes will be broken into sub-processes to be evaluated for "shared serviceability" and transactional parts of these processes will move to shared service operations.
· 2011 IT Investment Priorities: CPGs will look at investing in mobility, collaboration within and outside of their enterprises and digitizing their value chains.
What do you predict for the CPG industry in 2011? We would love to hear what you think - please feel free to share your thoughts below.
We are looking forward to a great 2011, and hope yours is the same. We are very proud to start our year by recently being recognized as #1 among leading Retail IT Services Providers by the prestigious RIS IT Services LeaderBoard: http://www.infosys.com/newsroom/press-releases/Pages/retail-IT-services.aspx.
