Restructuring the global economic order with real time insights using scalable epidemiology framework.
- Epidemiological models to identify risk of infection to frontline staff
- Store traffic management, early warning for hazards and choke points
- Trial Run: Merchandise management for essential categories
- Establish behavioral norms that help slow the spread, are easy to implement and have large reach
- Nudge to drive voluntary participation and responsible behavior by shoppers
- Data to identify hot-spots and high product-browsing aisles, and behavioral science to drive required norms
- Store level forecasts, adjusted for stock up, increased consumption
- Online customer demand; returns prediction
- Anomaly detection
- Real time monitoring, predictive and prescriptive maintenance of plant and machinery
- Ship on workbench: Risk mitigation for outbound shipping during COVID-19 ship
- Donate/Destroy/Trigger promo optimization for near end life products
- Working capital & cash flow projections
- Available investment for SKU support
- Instrument valuation and hedging
- Enable executives to self serve and make data based decisions from home with human centric design and cognitive tools
The omnichannel commerce was rapidly reducing the physical store, pushing it into an app on a smartphone. The COVID-19 pandemic, brought a further 25% surge in e-commerce led by online grocery and brought new cohorts into the digital marketplace, viz the boomers and Gen-Xs. The change in behavior is now here to stay.
The current situation has also brought in a sharp focus on the supply chain as our lifeline. To meet consumer demand, we have come to expect frontline people to be available at the store like never before, even as retailers are setting up express delivery services to cover the last mile.
It is important to keep the supply lines running to meet customer demand while ensuring the safety and security of the customers and frontline people. The retail industry also has a burning platform for digital transformation, changing investments for a predominantly online business.
Here are six operating solutions that leverage the power of AI, data engineering, and human-centric design to enable efficient operations in the short term; also find a series of transformative solutions and ideas for pivoting to the novel economy.
The COVID-19 outbreak has created a massive disruption in how we make, sell, and consume products, some of it having a lasting impact on the CPG industry. The immediate imperative for the industry is to pivot to consumer demand in their trusted brands, ensure the safety of their frontline staff, and keep a close watch on their working capital. Besides, we also need a plan for the emerging changes in human behavior- how we work, socialize & shop and torque our pace of digital transformation.
In these times of social distancing and lockdowns to efficiently run integrated operations, we recommend seven winning strategies by leveraging the power of AI, data engineering, and design.
There is a rapid shift of demand for many product categories, with some experiencing an unprecedented surge in sales, while others see flagging demand. There is a need for a COVID-19 adjusted Category and Portfolio Plan, both for the Annual Operating plan period and Stat-plan period.
We have developed a population mobility index using Google Mobility data to capture the intensity of lockdown and social distancing for the short term; At the same time, accurately assess demand at each phase of the pandemic in the post COVID-19 period. The model is continually updated as new data comes in.
In the new normal of VUCA COVID-19 world, we enable seamless cross-functional executive collaboration. This minimizes the overhead of operational & tactical decisions that allow thousands of employees to focus on more pressing business issues, health, family, hobbies to work in this new normal. We can now support intuition & judgment with historical evidence and learning and leapfrog digital transformation by converting current traditionalists to self-serve tech users. This work-life simplification empowers executives with data across devices – laptops, mobiles, tablets, desktops, collaborative war-rooms to break the silos across brands, categories, channels & geographies. We feel confident in helping entities – businesses, governments, and every individual navigate through this tough time with less pain, even if work-life becomes a less significant part of many of our lives.
- Agile decision making can be integrated across revenue management, marketing optimization, forecasting hotspots, operational intelligence, demand and supply planning through a single source of truth, with a backbone of AI, engineering & design.
- We leverage automated accelerators to rapidly implement the above – Concordia to ingest and harmonize data; Eugenie and Foresient for anomaly detection and forecasting; Decision Whiz, Cuddle & ERYL enable simple & human-design friendly behavioral nudges & contextual insights.
With the anticipation of a recessionary environment for the next 12 months, the companies need to think of pricing and pack mix to reset the value equation with the consumer.
What if you could dynamically track changes in the marketplace and offer new promotion plans? TradePulse will enable you to do this and even further provide inputs based on promotion sensitivity changes, pack mix changes, channel mix changes as well as overall SKU demand.
It combines multiple datasets and market signals that can help you understand all aspects of the COVID-19 impact.
Efficient business planning and budgeting are the backbones of a company’s financials. COVID-19 impact has left many companies struggling to manage their day to day operating expenses.
The focus has dramatically shifted to a daily level view of cash flow and how do we get visibility to future liquidity requirements. Revisiting the planned number and forecasts considering COVID-19 risk can help companies sail through the current situation. Many companies are now looking for a quick turnaround to develop a forecast for multiple scenarios and some key metrics for the pandemic response.
Cash flow optimization through informed decisions around account receivables account payables, and inventory is a very useful tool to fight the current risk. Also, companies are revisiting their hedging strategies and closely monitoring their currency exposures.
In a nutshell, financial analytics with a targeted approach can help companies manage their cash flow better and plan for the current uncertainties.
To help companies stay in control and informed about their businesses, Fractal brings together a complete suite of financial analytics that is delivered through technology, domain expertise, and AIML techniques.
Eugenie.ai can analyze the global COVID-19 data and forecast the resulting business implications that will help you in decision making amidst the present scenario and contingency planning for staff fulfillment and operations.
Unlocking offices, stores, and factories:
- Identify employees who have a high probability of being infected, based on demography and health data.
- Forecast the number of employees who will be infected.
- Predict the infected employee’s basis on their work profiles.
- Identify the number of employees that should be allowed to work simultaneously for each of the functions, i.e., manufacturing, sales, etc., to ensure the business continuity and health/safety of their employees.
While COVID-19 could be a catalyst for companies to relook at their global supply chain strategy, there are short term actions needed to respond to the immediate challenge.
Make contingency plans with scenario planning strategies for different situations with Eugenie.ai. The solution can predict and act upon fluctuating baselines during and post COVID-19.
Delivering up to 10% more accuracy and outperforms both demand planners and data scientists, Foresient, the forecasting, and planning platform, use machine learning to help you achieve forecasting accuracy levels that would otherwise take months, in as little as a few hours.
Seasonality, holidays, and macroeconomic drivers, amongst many other factors, predict the investments that you need to make. Foresient uses any historical data, along with thousands of built-in algorithms, to identify the best fit for your specific forecast type automatically.
The tool comes with an intuitive consumption layer, to help forecast at speed and scale and implemented on the cloud or on-premise.
COVID-19 adjusted demands
A forecasting model must change rapidly to predict consumer behaviors during the pandemic. Foresient takes a scientific approach to understand the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown and how to ease it with short, medium, and long-term business impact.
The tool works on a base forecast that is adjusted to forecast the impact and its severity. By using the Foresient forecasting platform, you gain immediate insight into consumer demand down to the store or SKU level, basis a range of market factors. The platform uses advanced machine learning and AI to get this forecast in a few hours, helping create effective supply chains.
- Weekly forecast by SKU, customer, channel, region at scale
- Estimate impact of COVID-19 on projected base and incremental sales
- Short, mid term and long term scenarios
- Safety stock: Recommend right days of supply on focus SKUs
- Ship on workbench: Risk mitigation for outbound shipping during COVID-19
- Donate/Destroy/Trigger promo optimization for near end life products
- Epidemiological models to identify risk of infection to frontline staff
- Real time monitoring, predictive and prescriptive maintenance of plant and machinery
- Working capital & cash flow projections
- Available investment for SKU support
- Instrument valuation and hedging
- Migration to large and base packs
- Channel migration to e-commerce and mass channels
- Promos for “End of Life” products
- Self-serve and find gap resolutions
- Communicate decisions uniformly
- Demand assessment at each phase of the pandemic
- Post COVID-19 demand drivers
Among the many shades of the crisis, the media consumption has gone through a complete change. Where at one point at-home entertainment options like digital, TV, gaming to see an upswing as ‘lockdown behavior’ results in habit formation, there is a new trend forming in customer management strategy. Find more about this changed world.
Related topic:
The COVID-19 outbreak has created a massive disruption in how we make, sell, and consume products. The immediate imperative for the industry is to pivot to consumer demand in their trusted brands, ensure the safety of their frontline staff, and keep a close watch on their working capital. Besides, we also need a plan for the emerging changes in human behavior- how we work, socialize & shop and torque our pace of digital transformation.
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Qure.ai has developed AI powered virtual care solutions that can identify people at high-risk of COVID-19, much before they reach the hospital emergency rooms. The platforms help track, manage and prioritise the testing and improve diagnosis of COVID-19. The solutions have been adapted to today’s unprecedented and changing situation.
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Related topics:
The COVID-19 pandemic has reduced the need for a physical store, and created a 25% surge in e-commerce, bringing new cohorts to the digital marketplace viz boomers and Gen-Xs. This change in behavior is here to stay. The retail industry is also on a burning platform for digital transformation, changing investments for a predominantly online business. Find the six operating solutions, leveraging the power of AI, data engineering, and human-centric design to enable efficient operations, transformative solutions, and ideas for pivoting to the novel economy.
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- How much to Sell
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