There
is no better time for reflection than the New Year; that’s why CGT
asked its subscriber base to identify their most valued and used
solutions and services providers across 11 categories. We hope that the
results of our eighth annual Readers’ Choice Survey, as well as
accompanying commentary from CGT, industry analysts and users in the
field, help as you ponder your business and technology choices past,
present and future.
TOP 10 LISTS
The results on the pages that follow are derived from the feedback of
approximately 150 consumer goods business and IT executives. The ballot
spanned a various technology and services categories, including Supply
Chain Planning, Customer Relationship Management, Trade Promotion
Management, Demand Data Analytics, Business Intelligence, New Product
Development and Introduction, Outsourcing and more.
Survey respondents were asked to identify the solutions and
services vendors they currently use across the aforementioned
categories, and rank the customer experience they have had using a
scale of one to five
(1 being extremely dissatisfied, 5 being extremely satisfied).
Subsequently, the Top 10 list (or Top 5 list, in some cases) for each
category was determined by assigning each company a combined score of
the sheer number of votes (indicative of their reach in the consumer
goods industry) weighed against their average customer experience
ratings. The 10 companies (or five) that received the highest combined
scores in each category were then ranked accordingly.
To ensure the integrity of the survey process, we asked
respondents to only vote in the categories in which they are intimately
involved. Thus, supply chain executives voted in categories that touch
the supply chain; sales and marketing executives voted in
customer-facing categories; innovation-minded executives voted in the
new product development and introduction category; and general business
and IT executives, because they touch all areas of the business, voted
in every category (see Figure 2).
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE AND SMB MARKET
In addition to our Top 10 and Top 5 lists, CGT recognizes companies in
each category that received special accolades from readers for
excellence in customer satisfaction and performance in the small to
midsize business market. Here is an explanation of each:
Customer Experience: This list identifies the three companies that
received the highest average customer satisfaction rating from users in
their respective categories. In addition, we’ve added a measure, titled
“Category Customer Experience,” that averages customer experience
ratings from all responses in a category.We hope that this measure is
indicative of how much value a particular category of solutions or
services is providing the consumer goods industry.
SMB Market: This list determines the most widely used services and
solutions providers among consumer goods firms with $1 billion or less
in revenue. The methodology for this list follows the same rules as
that for the larger Top 10 and Top 5 lists — but the demographic
consists only of those executives who identified themselves as working
for a small to midsize firm, 44 percent of our respondent base (see
Figure 1 and Figure 3).
EDITORS’ PICK
Even though this year’s Readers’ Choice survey contains 11 different
solutions and services categories, some companies did not find an
appropriate home within its parameters. In response, an “Editors’ Pick”
page was created to assign recognition for those companies with
offerings that support your supply chain, sales and marketing and
innovation strategies. While these companies may not have a high volume
of customer engagements, may be new to the industry or perhaps they
simply don’t fit exactly into one specific category, they are making an
impact on the industry and are worthy of attention.
CONSUMER GOODS MANUFACTURERS ARE FACING
macro-level changes that are strongly influencing their investment in
supply chain planning solutions. Globalization and low cost country
sourcing are dramatically affecting the logistics and economics of
moving raw materials and finished product, steering consumer goods
companies toward technologies that will help them understand and
optimize these opportunities.
Consumer goods companies are tackling persistent out of stocks
with demand signal repositories — specialized databases for demand data
often working in concert with inventory fingerprinting via RFID. While
RFID investments have become more pragmatic, “it has raised awareness
of other data sources such as point of sale that companies are not
doing much with,” says Simon Ellis, supply chain strategies practice
director for Manufacturing Insights, an IDC company.
Becoming demand-driven has been a common goal, but many consumer
goods companies are finding the reality tough. The new approach is
“demand aware but fulfillment driven,” says Ellis. Attitudes toward
planning and forecasting have also changed. Near-term planning is still
important, of course: Mother Parkers, a large coffee and tea
manufacturer in North America, recently deployed Logility Voyager
Solutions to improve demand and inventory planning, gain visibility
into market demand and seasonal patterns, and aggregate data quickly
for capacity planning, saving $800,000 on safety stock in the first two
months; New Era Cap selected the SAP Business All-in-One solution to
optimize complex supply chain processes, improve inventory control and
increase order fill rates across U.S. and European operations; and H.J.
Heinz added JDA’s Dynamic Demand Response solution to improve
visibility into its North America supply chain, enabling it to sense
and respond to market demand fluctuations.
But, consumer goods companies are expressing a renewed interest in
long-term planning to better consider overall supply chain costs. “We
will start to see a bit of reversal of the low cost country sourcing
trend to optimize total supply chain costs,” says Ellis. Quality,
counterfeit and recall issues are also driving this reversal.
Another trend is the movement toward tools to forecast SKUs that
fall outside the high volume categories for which many tools were
designed, according to Lora Cecere, research director, consumer
products at AMR Research.
Reviving interest in vendor managed inventory (VMI) is also
winning attention. JDA announced an end-to-end supply chain
optimization solution with integrated VMI planning and execution
capabilities, integrating JDA and Manugistics replenishment, planning
and execution applications.
Supply chain software developers, including Oracle and SAP,
continue to move to service-oriented architectures, Software as a
Service and mobility to connect front office and back office
applications. These firms are also increasing channel programs to
penetrate small to midsize companies; JDA, for example, created an
Alliance Connection program to address increased worldwide demand.
Meanwhile, SAP continues to expand its vertical and geographic best
practices.
Customer Experience
“Procter & Gamble (P&G) is successfully using Terra
Technology’s solutions in a significant portion of our business and we
plan to roll out globally in the near future,” says Mark Kremblewski,
global business expert, demand planning,P&G. “The forecast accuracy
improvement delivered by Demand Sensing enabled significant reductions
in safety stock while maintaining service levels. Demand Sensing is an
important part of P&G’s Consumer- Driven Supply Network,helping us
win at the first moment of truth.”
1. Terra Technology
2. Logility
3. Oracle
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