Kimberly-Clark Corp.

With transportation spend for consumer product companies at roughly 7 percent of cost of goods sold, why is logistics planning stuck in a world of manual spreadsheets disconnected from core supply chain systems?

Kimberly-Clark has been an industry pioneer, industrializing its business process operations through Genpact in 2007, when the company made the strategic decision to drive more cost-effective finance operations in order to focus on product innovation and customer service.

This 10th anual list from Gartner, Inc. features several longtime leaders with new lessons to share and a number of more recent entrants from the high-tech, consumer product and industrial sectors.

Previously at Schwans, the exec helped revitalize the pizza business by repositioning iconic brands like Red Baron and Freschetta, including launching new advertising and bringing consumer driven innovation.

The company appoints Kimberly Aylward to the newly created position of General Manager of Direct-to-Consumer Gifting, where she will oversee e-commerce sales and brand marketing efforts.

Kimberly-Clark, suspecting its compliance rates were hovering around 15 percent to 50 percent, saw an industry-wide opportunity to increase collaboration with its retail partners and improve the current promotional compliance standards.

CGT's readers rank the top technology providers of software/services for managing, monitoring and measuring internal and external social media communications/engagement.

Booz & Company recently conducted the bi-annual refresh of its Customer Planning and Trade Spend study, revealing that a majority of consumer goods companies believe they spend too many resources on trade promotion management and are unhappy with the quality of the tools/systems available to manage investments. Executives from Kimberly-Clark, Kraft Foods and McCormick & Company discuss the pain points, best practices and tips for better efficiency in customer planning and trade spend.