Top 6 Takeaways: Smoke Jumpers XVII | Blacksmith Applications

Thank you to the speakers who presented during May’s Smoke Jumpers XVII – trade investment management and optimization strategic sessions.

The Top 6 Takeaways from Smoke Jumpers – Trade Spend Strategy Meeting:

A growing need exists to optimize new product(s) and limit the resources put against those products that are less successful.
- Foodservice manufacturers are charged with trying to help fill the gaps and bring new items to operators.
- Use data to better manage your business and penetrate sales opportunities. Think about: where has growth been happening over the past few years? Where are the best opportunities for this product? What segments are growing? How much product should I develop – where’s the demand?

Thanks to disruption of commercial spend, there are big shifts coming in CPG retail.
- Consumers’ value and engagement across the path to purchase is different, CPGs are changing their business model to adapt to consumer needs, and new and emerging technologies are evolving CPG capabilities.

Streamline the pricing approval process to gain trade visibility.
- It’s no longer effective to use emails – that leads to miscommunication, incomplete data and there’s no audit trail.
- Discover a solution that works for you. With a systematic process, you’ll automate the process, eliminate need for excel requests, increase visibility for P&L owners, alleviate risk of incomplete or inconsistent data, remove questions about approval authority.

Group purchasing organizations take on data transparency in foodservice.
- Working together, transparency can be the industry norm. The goal is to eliminate the “data gates” that the dynamics of the foodservice supply chain have created.
- Collaborate to get the right information, for the right situation, at the right time. (Who’s buying? Who stopped buying?)

Manufacturers are challenged to collected, organize and match data. Address the challenge by thinking differently and starting small.
- Transform your data sources into formats that can be fed into downstream analytical tools.

The trade promotion business model is more transparent than ever. Adjust your process to keep up.
- 67% of consumer goods companies can’t simulate promotional outcomes. Amazon is changing prices minute-by-minute – how can CPG manufacturers who determine pricing 12 months in advance keep up?
- Make your data actionable. Connect the dots by working across functions internally. Do you know when you’re stacking promotions? Are you giving away a product?