When a global consumer packaged goods manufacturer needed to secure competitive advantage with a major retailer in the US, it turned to Thorogood. The solution – a powerful and flexible analytics platform, has become a central part of the manufacturer’s strategy for data-driven category growth with its retail partners.
Market context
In the hyper competitive retail market, category leadership is everything. CPG manufacturers must negotiate with retailers for distribution, shelf placement, promotional support, and displays; retailers need high-quality, branded products that appeal to customers.
Manufacturers who share useful data and drive sales in a category can become ‘category captains,’ leading to closer collaboration with retailers. The key to these partnerships is sharing data that reveals opportunities for shared value and profit growth.
The challenge
The manufacturer needed to foster a ‘win-win’ relationship with its major retail partner, the 7th largest retailer in the US. To achieve this, it needed an automated analytics platform to support data-led collaboration and increase sales for both partners. Thorogood was chosen to create the platform and demonstrate its potential with this key retail customer.
The solution
Thorogood built an analytics platform using proprietary and third-party data to provide comprehensive insights into shopper behavior for both the manufacturer and its retail partner. Various data types were ingested to paint a detailed picture of consumer preferences.
A data ‘lakehouse’ architecture structured the information efficiently, allowing flexibility to answer new business questions. Despite being an innovative and early deployment at the time, the solution continues to deliver value today due to its well-considered development.
The platform’s shared benefits have been crucial to its success. For example, the manufacturer can quickly identify inventory gaps and supply the retailer with the right products to grow the category and ensure customer satisfaction.
The right way
Thorogood’s deep knowledge of the CPG sector informed its approach from the start. Combined with expertise in integrating the best market solutions, Thorogood created an efficient technology architecture. Agility enabled the team to deliver an initial solution within months and adapt as the platform evolved.
Recognizing the retail world’s fast-changing nature, agility was also built into the solution, allowing the manufacturer to answer new questions, identify innovation opportunities, and model new scenarios. Thorogood continues to help the manufacturer add new data streams and reports into the platform.
Better decisions
The platform’s speed, flexibility, and accessibility has empowered both businesses to collaborate and take data-driven decisions to grow the category. This has secured the manufacturer’s position, providing greater bargaining power, control over product sales, and enriched insights from competitor data.
Our customer was blown away by the platform, saying that it is miles beyond their internal platform and specifically calling out the speed of the data.
– A Senior Manager, Customer Analytics – Retail.
The retailer benefits from additional shopper insights and increased category sales, while the manufacturer has a repeatable model for securing competitive advantage in its relationships with all retail customers.
