October 7th, 2009 at 8:56 am

The Importance of Capturing Demand Data

The advent of mobility is moving interactions between producers and consumers ever closer to the point of happening in real time. This will revolutionize many industries, especially the CPG world. Capturing and understanding demand data in real time is going to become a key competitive advantage for companies. Those that get it right will thrive. Those that do not are going to find themselves in increasingly perilous straits as they deal with competitors who have an informational advantage and start to apply it to grab market share, lower cost and out perform their rivals. 4.1 billion humans are now walking around with a two-way communication device for the first time in history, and that changes the world. It will have an impact on companies that sell in high volume. They will have the ability to capture data from all those transactions and roll that data back into the decision making process.

The top 200 CPG companies spent $50 billion last year in marketing and advertising. Why? To influence consumers at the point of purchase – when they are standing in front of an item deciding whether to buy or not. But with traditional advertising, the advertiser doesn’t really know who saw the billboard or whose eye was caught by the in-store display. Real-time interactions with consumers will allow companies to capture the data of whether their marketing to a consumer worked or not, and it will be on an instant, individual basis.

Throughout a company’s supply chain there is an enormous amount of information. Well-integrated supply chains can tell where every product is on trucks, in a warehouse facility, on store shelves. Companies will be able to pair this information with demand data and streamline supply operations even further, reducing wasted costs in stored inventory, lost sales because of lack of anticipation, etc. Demand data is about to be available in ways that it has not been to date. Combining that data with existing supply chain data will allow companies that do it well to attain a distinct and sustainable competitive advantage.

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  • About The Fourth Shock

    This site contains articles related to alqemyiQ CEO Ron Bienvenu's book titled The Fourth Shock.

    Bienvenu's book explores how mobility brings with it the opportunity to both interact with consumers and capture demand data in real time. These real-time interactions will change the historically reactive supply chain into a pro-active one. By leveraging this information, companies will be able to interact with consumers and pro-actively influence purchasing choices to squeeze the most profit from all parts of the supply chain.