Last month, trade, sales, and marketing consultants from Clarkston’s consumer products practice attended the 2024 POI Fall Summit in Dallas, TX. This fall’s event explored critical topics, strategies, and tactics for addressing the evolving CPG landscape, particularly around areas in RGM, omnichannel, AI, trade, eCommerce, analytics, and retail execution. Below, we’re covering three key takeaways from the event.  

2024 POI Fall Summit Takeaways

Takeaway #1
Pursuing a Holistic, Win-Win-Win Approach for Manufacturers, Retailers, and Consumers in the Supply Chain 

To create successful outcomes in the supply chain, manufacturers, retailers, and consumers must collaborate holistically and consider every touchpoint along the buyer’s journey. Brand management, shopper marketing, and consumer analytics are critical levers for enabling this collaboration. When one of these elements is missing, in-store execution often falls short—after all, you can’t sell a product if it’s not on the shelf.  

Consider Coca-Cola’s collaboration with large retailers like Walmart. By leveraging shared shopper insights and point-of-sale data, Coca-Cola tailored its promotions and inventory replenishment plans to better align with consumer demand. This collaboration helped reduce stockouts by 15% and increased in-store sales during key promotional periods. As brands are looking to manage this relationship with their partners, the key question becomes – where are the opportunities to drive efficiencies that benefit all parties—manufacturer, retailer, and consumer? 

Note: Transparency and Collaboration Are Essential

Strong partnerships require transparency between trading partners. This includes openly sharing data, such as projections and strategic goals, and taking corrective actions together when necessary. By aligning on shared objectives and exchanging insights, organizations can better meet consumer needs while strengthening relationships across the supply chain. 

Takeaway #2
Evolving Best Practices in Category Management 

Category management has shifted from being reactive—relying solely on last year’s data—to a proactive and consumer-centric process. Modern “Category Management 2.0” leverages robust technology and new capabilities to not only put the consumer at the center of decision-making but create forward-looking business plans founded in that understanding. This enables highly targeted marketing efforts and more effective resource allocation to drive returns. The supermarket industry, for example, has excelled by dedicating resources to this evolved approach. Publix, for example, successfully implemented predictive analytics for category management, specifically in its fresh produce section. By analyzing consumer buying patterns, it reduced spoilage by 10% while ensuring popular items like avocados were consistently stocked 

Takeaway #3
The Role of AI and Advanced Analytics in Supply Chain Transformation 

AI and advanced analytics have revolutionized how businesses synthesize and leverage vast amounts of data. Today, organizations can process information instantly, enabling decision-makers to ask better and more strategic questions that drive progress. However, success in this area depends on clean, well-structured data and clear organizational goals – with the former being a considerable challenge for many businesses that do not have the right data hygiene or data governance processes in place.  

The heavy lifting of data wrangling is increasingly being shifted from people to machines. AI can scale these insights across all accounts, not just top-performing ones. While AI cannot generate content without proper input, its ability to analyze and synthesize structured data allows businesses to operate with greater efficiency. By focusing less on managing information and more on asking the right questions, organizations can use AI to unlock new levels of value for manufacturers, retailers, and consumers alike. 

Closing Thoughts 

As always, the 2024 POI Fall Summit offered ample opportunities for networking, exchanging ideas, and discussing the most impactful coming trends and disruptors to this space. To learn more about how we’re helping our clients address these challenges and more in the CPG space, please contact us today or subscribe to our insights below to learn more about our perspectives each week.