As Gallo Evolves Supply Chain, Look for Retail Media, Composable Systems to Have Growing Focus
CPG supply chain professionals are increasingly taking notice of where they should fit within the blistering growth of retail media.
Media spend is a supply chain issue, stressed Nitin Murali, VP of supply chain excellence at wine company Gallo, and brands should be thinking about how to best leverage and guide it to optimize inventory levels.
It’s something the family-owned wine company is currently focusing on, he said at Groceryshop in Las Vegas on Monday, with the ultimate goal of having insights that enable them to pull their media spend levers in time with inventory needs.
While it will take some time to lay the foundation, “eventually what we want to do is create a really connected ecosystem where we can clearly understand where the value is and what value is driven by each part of the chain,” said Murali.
Gallo’s Supply Chain Evolution
Murali is currently elevating the supply chain function within Gallo, a family-owned company with over 160 brands that rebranded from E.J. Gallo earlier this year. As part of this, he’s building a new center of excellence within the organization.
Murali detailed Gallo’s operations as a four-way structure:
- Systems of record, such as ERPs
- Systems of differentiation, such as warehouse or transportation management systems
- Systems of intelligence, which should have the ability to write back into core systems
- Systems of engagement, which are customer- or employee-facing.
It’s the last two layers that they are increasingly becoming interested in to provide more seamless experiences for both customers and employees, and they’re exploring the potential of modular and composable technologies, including MACH principles, to do so.
“Gone are the days when you force employees to adapt to new technology,” said Murali. “Now you need to create technology that adapts to people's extra [needs]. That's the bottom line.”
Gallo has sites with a single person working across five functions. “It's not fair for that person to go through five different systems to do their jobs, so how can I still create a unified experience for them?”
As a result, they’re currently working with a number of partners to develop a modular space that sits on top of their systems of records and differentiation. It will not only unify the employee experience into a single system, but it will have the capabilities to write back into those systems.
