RGM Strategies for Today's New CPG Landscape

Revenue growth management (RGM) isn’t a new area of investment, but it has certainly seen renewed interest these last several years. It’s a segment that is ripe for innovation and digitalization, but consumer goods manufacturers often encounter roadblocks related to RGM transformation. In this fireside chat, Joel Cartwright, industry principal, consumer products, Vistex, discusses today's RGM strategies in the consumer goods industry, tackling the opportunities that exist, along with the challenges, and the IT tools needed to bring RGM into the future. Cartwright has been in the industry for 25-plus years. He began on the manufacturing side with companies like Sarah Lee Foods, Kimberly-Clark, and Sunday Delight. Over the last several years, he’s transitioned over to the software side, working with manufacturers in the revenue growth management space. Within the RGM landscape, manufacturers are feeling the pressure of digitalization. They have to ask themselves, “How do I automate the process? How can information be updated in real-time?” From a technology standpoint, the centralization of data continues to be a key consideration. Companies have to gather data from various different sources, Cartwright said, and so they must create a more harmonized technology or IT ecosystem that can pull all this data into a central location. It comes down to prioritizing getting organized across metrics and reporting and hiring experts who can manage the process. If they don’t, warned Cartwright, manufacturers will only hurt their business in the long run. Even a simple dashboard is enough to get started. Companies need to assess their IT architecture to determine if there are overlapping functionalities or redundant processes. Are there ways to automate the APIs or centralize from a data standpoint? How will the data be cleansed?For example, a data repository can align with how a company looks at its information, such as SKUs or customer data. Referencing his time at Kimberly-Clark, Cartwright discussed the RGM challenge it faced: there were many redundant applications that lacked harmonization. To solve this, the company scanned its systems to identify an application that could manage the end-to-end process of removing redundancies and scale efforts across the entire organization.The end result was real-time analysis, which allowed the company to become more reactionary and make more strategic decisions. Overall, however, the most essential part of a successful RGM transformation is having a solid foundation in place. Companies need to understand their technology structure and their IT ecosystem — and really understand their entire RGM journey. Despite it often being a significant culture change, manufacturers must put forth efforts to knock down silos. Without this crucial step, companies won’t be able to ride out the volatility of costs, and they’re not going to survive.

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