Revology Analytics had the opportunity to join 25 leading Revenue Growth Management executives in CPG and Manufacturing in St. Louis earlier this week. We discussed the state of Revenue Growth Analytics in the CPG industry and the significant opportunity to in-source and own many of the advanced analytics capabilities foundational to a successful RGM and Pricing strategy.

In many ways, the state of Revenue Growth Management and its associated analytics capabilities have not changed meaningfully in the last ten years for Consumer Goods companies. There’s still a heavy reliance on data and information providers like Nielsen and IRI to carry out foundational Pricing & Promotional Analytics efforts, including Price Elasticity and Marketing Mix Modeling, or a heavy reliance on 3rd party software for price analytics, scenario analyses, and optimization efforts.

However, the world is changing….fast.

AI/ML is not the ultimate solution for every data-related problem. We must first set up foundational descriptive and diagnostic analytics capabilities and more straightforward ML approaches before applying more advanced techniques. It’s essential to understand the business problems and work closely with functional partners to solve them in a way that aligns well with the company’s analytical readiness and operating rhythm.

The examples of Revenue Growth Analytics use cases mentioned, such as Promotional Analytics, Everyday Price Optimization, Dynamic, Automated Clearance Pricing, Bulk Purchase Optimization, Customer Segmentation & Predictive Insights, and Customer Churn & Cross-Sell Modeling, are practical and impactful capabilities that can drive measurable sales and gross profit improvements. They can be implemented using simple math and essential ML and with popular tech stacks with which pricing, supply chain, and sales partners are familiar.

Overall, the focus should be on pragmatic and co-created approaches with business stakeholders that are most likely to get adoption and impact rather than on celebrating complexity for its own sake.