EdgeVerve: Harnessing Data to Transform Supplier Strategies

Back in 2006, British mathematician and entrepreneur Clive Humby famously coined the phrase “data is the new oil”, in a bid to emphasise its value in the modern world. 

The point is, when drilling for oil, you initially get raw, unrefined crude which is of little use.

Sateesh Seetharamiah, CEO of Edge Platforms at Infosys subsidiary EdgeVerve, says this is precisely how suppliers in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) and manufacturing industries should be viewing data.

“We’ve moved past the state where we didn’t have the oil and were busy mining for it,” he explains.

“That data scarcity is no longer a problem; in fact, we have too much data. Every company worth its salt collects and stores data generated by its systems and processes. 

“The problem today is that this data is scattered, fragmented, sitting in outdated systems and often stuck in silos. Just like crude oil, it’s not consumption-ready to fuel business engines.”

However, for suppliers, tapping into these data pockets across the value chain can open the floodgates to rich, aggregated and more granular consumer insights beyond sales and performance data.

In today’s ultra-competitive, fast-moving business environment, they desperately need deeper insights into consumer baskets, their voice and their shopping behaviours – a far-from-straightforward task. 

Turning ‘digital crude’ into actionable insights 

Traditionally, supply chain visibility has been limited to tier-one customers, meaning a CPG or manufacturer can only see the activities of their immediate customers and vice versa.

As a result, when something changes a few tiers down the value chain, businesses are often caught unawares and unprepared.

In addition, the inability to access real-time, dynamic data and dashboards limits their ability to act promptly to address disruptions like recalls, ESG violations and human error. 

“In the last few decades, supply chain collaboration has improved,” Sateesh continues.

“Especially post-pandemic, the ecosystem has seen value in data sharing. 

“Companies across the supply chain spectrum are opening up their data with cutting-edge platforms. For example, Walmart is using a next-generation data suite called Luminate to give its suppliers access to valuable data.”

However, Sateesh says using this data remains a challenge for suppliers for several reasons: 

• They lack systems to reconcile the data to their organisations’ hierarchies and make it consumption-ready. The result is an inability to derive insights and take action. 
• They are unable to match the pace of high-speed data coming in from business partners. As data feeds and reports constantly emerge, frequent restatements can go unnoticed or break data pipelines to the downstream systems and applications. This leads to a lack of on-time and quality data.
• Most CPG and manufacturing companies need an array of custom KPIs for their internal decision-making. These KPIs may differ greatly from how the source system looks at them. As a result, they spend a lot of resources digging out everything they want. 
• They lack the technical infrastructure to consume API feeds and large data volumes, creating issues in data ingestion and integration at speed. Rebuilding systems and data pipelines in line with source data takes a lot of work. 

Moving from data to decisions

So, how can suppliers overcome these challenges and leverage the power of data to propel business success?

Sateesh points out that real-time insights are not just beneficial but essential for supplier success. Interpreting data to identify which products are trending, as well as how transportation routes can be optimised and material shortages avoided, is crucial to helping supplies confidently navigate competitive terrain.

However, to turn these large volumes of data into useful strategic tools, suppliers need an intelligent supply chain platform that can support decisions across the entire value chain. 

“An intelligent supply chain platform must deliver consistent, comprehensive and high-quality data to enable granular, near-real-time visibility across the value chain,” Sateesh goes on.

 “To do so, it must be capable of creating a peer-to-peer network connecting partners beyond immediate customers and suppliers. 

“Then, it should accelerate the onboarding of data sources with pre-built adapters and rapidly convert this incoming flow of data to organisation-specific hierarchies for seamless integration with internal systems. 

“Strong AI-ML and automation capabilities are needed for uninterrupted, harmonised data flows that are available for immediate consumption and analysis with zero non-core manual intervention.”

Intelligent platforms have the ability to optimise every step in the supply chain, from procurement all the way through to delivery. 

They can help identify bottlenecks, recommend transportation routes that shave hours off delivery times, improve supply and production planning and enable better business outcomes. 

Sateesh highlights the case of a Fortune 500 consumer goods company that wanted to improve planning and fulfilment and increase its sales and market reach. However, it faced difficulties obtaining trustworthy and timely demand information from channel partners. 

To overcome the challenge of manual processes and technology maturity, the organisation adopted a cloud-based data exchange platform to connect channel partners across multiple markets. Seamless data exchange from channel partners enabled actionable insights that improved case fill rates by 8-10% and reduced non-productive inventory by 3-4%. 

Data mastery key to supplier success

What’s clear is that, to stay on top in today's competitive landscape, CPG and manufacturing players must be nimble – ready to sidestep chaos and seize opportunities.

This requires decision and execution agility, which only becomes possible if they master data-driven decision-making.

“Ultimately,” Sateesh concludes, “companies that adopt and adeptly utilise advanced analytics will be the ones who consistently deliver the right product at the right time at the right price.”

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