The Promotion Optimization Institute Releases 2021 Vendor Panorama For Retail Sales Execution And Monitoring

Global report found that 70% of CPG lack necessary tools for retail decisions, 47% report limited availability of data insights, and 82% have difficulties moving capabilities from transactional to analytical

The Promotion Optimization Institute (POI), the leading resource for enterprise planning and execution, revenue management, trade marketing and merchandising executives, today released its 2021 Vendor Panorama for Retail Sales Execution and Monitoring (RetX) in Consumer Goods. This year’s Retail Sales Execution (RetX) Panorama evaluated 17 vendors including Accenture, Asseco, Customer Times, Exceedra, Kantar, MC1, Repsly, Salesforce, SAP, Spring Global, StayinFront, and others plus provided best-in-class distinctions across 18 different capabilities. The sixth annual POI RetX Vendor Panorama utilized data and insights from POI’s 2021 State of the Industry Survey of consumer product goods manufacturers around the world to identify where they are succeeding and struggling in the promotion, distribution, and execution of consumer products.

Read More: SalesTechStar Interview With Justin Swain, VP Strategic Partnerships At OpenReel

“While numerous aspects of in-store retail execution changed in 2020-2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the CPG industry should be very proud of the agility and consumer responsiveness it demonstrated,” said Pam Brown, Chief Commercial Officer, POI. “We are thrilled to see the number of new capabilities released since POI’s last report and know that they will streamline processes, reduce burden and provide greater visibility and connectedness for both manufacturers and retailers.”

POI designed the Vendor Panorama to help consumer goods companies stay abreast of retail execution trends, understand “what’s possible” from a technology perspective and gain best practices. Vendor products and solutions were evaluated across analytical insights, coaching, connected enterprise, data visualization, desktop UX, distributor management, gamification, guided selling, interactive customer presentations, mobile UX, predictive AI/ML, retail activity optimization (RAO), retail merchandising, social selling, and virtual calls/telesales,

Key Retail Sales Execution Survey Findings:

• 48% of those surveyed have not reached a level of satisfaction with their ability to execute at store level.
• 82% of respondents have challenges moving capabilities from transactional to analytical.
• 30% of field-based users reported they agree/agree strongly that have the tools they need to make appropriate decisions at retail.
• 52% reported their off-line capabilities are not being met.
• 37% of office-based users reported their analytical needs are not being met by their Retail Execution solution.
• 65% of organizations do not connect retail execution systems with TPx planning capabilities, losing out on the in-flight monitoring potential.
• 47% report limited availability and/or usage of data insights.

Recommendations:

• “Sales effectiveness” is the key retail activity which drives ROI. Vendors should continue to prioritize capabilities that will help users be more effective so they can “sell more.” These capabilities include retail activity optimization (RAO), image recognition, suggested orders, guided selling, social selling, and in-flight analytics.
• The field representative and merchandiser positions have traditionally had high turnover. CPGs should consider solutions and vendors which have an intuitive user design and provide built-in training and support. CPGs should also consider bring your own device (BYOD) capabilities to support transitions.
• Ask for best practices from your vendor or implementation partner. Consider this capability when evaluating vendors.
• Consider supplemental ways to execute certain retail activities, including telesales, crowdsourcing, and B2B self-service applications. Be mindful these activities and data must be integrated with complete retail data ecosystem to provide a complete view to retail activity.