Digital Experience Archives - 91¶¶Ňő /category/capability/digital-experience/ IT Consulting, Strategy & Outsourcing Services Company Tue, 11 Mar 2025 10:37:48 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.5 /wp-content/uploads/2020/03/itc-logo.png Digital Experience Archives - 91¶¶Ňő /category/capability/digital-experience/ 32 32 The Super Apps are here (are you riding the wave?) /blog/the-super-apps-are-here-are-you-riding-the-wave/ Wed, 09 Oct 2024 12:12:07 +0000 /?p=41594 The post The Super Apps are here (are you riding the wave?) appeared first on 91¶¶Ňő.

]]>

Super Apps are redefining the future by offering unparalleled convenience and hyper-personalization. These apps seamlessly merge our digital and physical lives, anticipate and predict our every desire and need, and let us access a universe of services, from augmented reality shopping to virtual healthcare and everything in between. Their superpower? They make everything available with a single tap. As boundaries blur between industries, super apps are forging new ecosystems, creating a gateway to a world of limitless possibility.Ěý

So, what is a Super App? One way to think of them is as a collection of related services and functionalities on a smartphone targeted at specific interest groups, where everything is a single click away. Given their rising success with consumers, businesses will soon want Super Apps to improve workplace communication, collaboration, efficiencies, engagement, and loyalty. Super Apps have the potential to transform the mobile landscape and offer exciting opportunities for businesses and users (see Figure 1).

Figure 1

Businesses that have invested in digital transformation are developing internal applications with roles-based access for sales, marketing, operations, finance, and facilities. However, the application environment soon becomes crowded, unwieldy, and difficult to manage. This is illogical, several workflows—such as login or chat—are common to every application, and even a tiny change in the process means the enterprise must make the change separately across several such applications. A single app reduces the effort to the barest minimum.

Building a Super App requires significant time, resources, and expertise in user experience design, software development, and infrastructure management. To succeed, Super Apps must offer a seamless and intuitive user experience while providing a wide range of functionalities and services (see Figure 2).

Figure 2

However, the potential benefits of a Super App make it a worthwhile endeavor for businesses looking to provide a one-stop-shop solution for their customers. A single Super App minimizes the overhead of onboarding and change management. It delivers richer user behavior data to help developers customize, rationalize (the features), and improve the Super App.Ěý

For enterprises that are amid their digital transformation journeys, an organization-wide Super App has become a necessity, especially because employees want frictionless interaction with colleagues and easy access to organizational processes, some of which are listed here:

  • Important organization-wide broadcasts
  • Project and product announcements and reporting
  • HR Playbooks, checklists, guides, and support
  • New employee onboarding
  • Training and Development programsĚý
  • Procurement processes
  • Approved vendors
  • Access to the service delivery platforms
  • Polls, surveys, and internal competitions
  • Events
  • Customer details/ Customer visits
  • Community activities
  • Social messaging and chat
  • Video conferencing
  • Helpdesk access
  • Service anniversaries
  • Job postings/ Referrals
  • Podcasts, blogs
  • ESG targets and commitments
  • Rewards and Recognition
  • Travel requests
  • Expense claims
  • Timesheets
  • Attendance management
  • Salary disbursement
  • Leave management
  • User profile
  • Password reset

Super Apps are a revolution in the making—and China’s WeChat, with a staggering , is showing us the way. And across the world, from and in Southeast Asia, and in India, and in other parts of the world, everyone is following.Ěý

A 2022 study called showed that 7 in 10 respondents were interested in a Super App, 90 percent of whom were motivated by the convenience of an integrated app. Gartner estimates that by 2027.Ěý

One of the leading reasons for the growth of Super Apps is app fatigue. App downloads have plateaued (), and studies forecast they will keep falling. Users will migrate to Super Apps–where all the action is brewing.


Author:

Dileep Kumar,
Practice Head – Mobility

The post The Super Apps are here (are you riding the wave?) appeared first on 91¶¶Ňő.

]]>
Sustainability Data Analytics Platform for Implementing Sustainability 2.0 /blogs/sustainability-data-analytics-platform-for-implementing-sustainability-2.0/ Fri, 13 Jan 2023 13:33:02 +0000 /?p=39484 In recent years it has been witnessed that several industries are preparing to embrace sustainability — the management of greenhouse gas emissions, energy consumption, waste management, green product development, and […]

The post Sustainability Data Analytics Platform for Implementing Sustainability 2.0 appeared first on 91¶¶Ňő.

]]>
In recent years it has been witnessed that several industries are preparing to embrace sustainability — the management of greenhouse gas emissions, energy consumption, waste management, green product development, and water conservation — as an integral factor for their manufacturing and is no longer treated as an expense but as a crucial value differentiator. The manufacturing industry is now introducing sustainability 2.0 as an integral part of its business model and core strategy. Launching sustainability 2.0 is to improve long-term sustainable goals and ESG (environmental, societal governance) challenges. The need to shift to more sustainable business operations is highly critical.

91¶¶Ňő is on a journey towards Sustainability 2.0, an agenda that reinvents sustainability under the compelling challenges of climate change and social inequity. This new agenda is driven by a remarkable combination of thought and action on 91¶¶Ňő’s part with meaningful public-private-people partnerships. The Sustainability Report 2.0 is available .

The Need for a Sustainability Data Analytics Platform

Research by states that 86% of business leaders have invested in sustainable practices to protect their organizations from disruptions. However, reporting on sustainability initiatives and finding various data types is difficult for all relevant parties to access. In order to drive sustainability performance management, the data analytics platform is vital.

Why is Sustainability Data Analytics Platform Necessary?

  • Unable to detect human errors during data collection – Leveraging AI-driven document processing methods
  • Unable to trace and audit data – Ensuring end-to-end traceability by customizing system logs as user-friendly. Approvers can easily interpret and make approval decisions with sustainability data reviews
  • Time-consuming while aggregating data – Introducing the power of data aggregating capabilities by customizing industry-standard data management tools
  • Inconvenience while accessing sustainability reports – Enabling self-serving capability with ideal role-based access control for different stakeholders
  • Difficulty in getting the approval of reported sustainability data – Leveraging integrated workflow for end-to-end automation of processes ranging from data preparation to approval
  • Proactive methods needed for meeting sustainability targets – Introducing machine learning models with the help of predictive analytics tools for preventive actions to meet the defined sustainability goals
  • No single source of truth for sustainability reports – Introducing a self-service platform for accessing sustainability artifacts

How Will the Sustainability Data Analytics Platform Help?

  • Integrated platform with low environment code to address the above-mentioned pain points
  • Single source of truth for stakeholders for complete transparency of sustainability reports
  • Secured access to data across stakeholders, data providers, reviewers, sustainability officers, and external auditors
  • Automated workflow for end-to-end data management and reporting
  • Complete traceability of data preparation, reviews, corrections, and approvals
  • Complex calculations to arrive the critical sustainability measures across environmental footprints – energy, emission, water, and waste
  • Prebuilt data model to reduce the time of implementation
  • Various connectors to extract data from scanned documents, PDFs, enterprise resource planning, and excel sheets

How is the 91¶¶Ňő Sustainability Data Analytics Platform different from other platforms?

Here are the key differentiators that make 91¶¶Ňő a strong player among others:

  • Single Version of Truth
  • Pre-built data model suitable for manufacturing and consumer product companies
  • Automation of data consistency, accuracy, and completeness verification in the data collection process
  • Inbuilt predictive insights for corrective actions to meet sustainability targets
  • Role-Based Access to Data
  • Accessible roll-out features across businesses
  • Configuration options for third-party audits
  • Full Stack Solution ensures data collection till sustainability reporting and analytics
  • Easy and convenient to deploy across different business units and facilities
  • The functional view of each of the components is depicted below:

The 91¶¶Ňő Sustainability Data Analytics Platform is based on cloud technology, favouring the resource-efficient use of IT resources, and enabling every company’s flexible and expandable growth. With integrated solutions, companies can introduce sustainability goals more confidently and cleanly into their daily activities and move strategically toward building more resilient, sustainable businesses.

The post Sustainability Data Analytics Platform for Implementing Sustainability 2.0 appeared first on 91¶¶Ňő.

]]>
How the CPG and Manufacturing industries can improve outcomes using an Intelligent Planning and Performance Management model /how-the-cpg-and-manufacturing-industries-can-improve-outcomes-using-an-intelligent-planning-and-performance-management-model/ Tue, 22 Feb 2022 09:57:53 +0000 /?p=37680 The Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) function in the CPG and Manufacturing sectors can be dramatically affected by change, whether from a pandemic, the competitive environment or a policy change. […]

The post How the CPG and Manufacturing industries can improve outcomes using an Intelligent Planning and Performance Management model appeared first on 91¶¶Ňő.

]]>
The Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) function in the CPG and Manufacturing sectors can be dramatically affected by change, whether from a pandemic, the competitive environment or a policy change. To respond to these changes, we have created a model for Intelligent Planning and Performance Management. The model allows organizations to improve operational control and boost agility (for details, go here ). The FP&A function can further improve its capabilities by incorporating the latest industry-accepted best practices into their Planning and Performance Management systems (for details, go here).

The planning and budgeting process provides decisions across the organization, requiring a deep understanding of the methodical activities and authorizations followed by a typical CPG or a manufacturing company. Finance leaders who follow this sequence find it easier to deliver long-term value creation:

Step 1: The company leadership and the executive committee discuss organizational goals and business expectations about 4-6 months before the start of the planning year. This is the discussion for the Annual Operating Plan and is based on new product launches, inclusion of new market and plans for existing market share expansion. A strategic plan emerges from these discussions. At this stage, forming a cross departmental executive committee led by CFO’s office is key to success.

Step 2: The executive committee with the CFO’s office prepares a 1-to-3-year strategic plan with revenue, cost and profit targets. This is followed by two activities:

  • Basis the business expectation and goals shared by leadership, the executive committee provides its recommendations and feedback to the CFO’s office for revisiting the enterprise level SWOT.
  • In coordination with departmental/ functional managers, a data sharing matrix is envisaged, detailing the type and granularity of data to be shared with departments and individuals.

Step 3: The executive committee completes SWOT analysis (based on high-level revenue, profitability and capex and opex and manpower plan) with an aggregation at corporate level, and a break down at business unit, zones and product and channel combinations. The guidance on Annual Operating Plan and a Strategic Plan is then finalized.

Step 4: The business unit/ zonal managers share the Annual Operating Plan and Strategic Plan with the Sales and Marketing function and other related departments such as production and finance. Feedback from the departments is analyzed and passed on to executive committee which may then revisit the Strategic Plan.

Step 5: Sales and Marketing teams devise their zonal plans or customer-wise product mix, etc. The Sales Plan is finalized after incorporating plausible changes suggested by the executive committee. Plans are then aggregated at the business unit/ zone level to create a corporate level plan.

Step 6: Once the demand is finalized, business units/ zones create their plans across production, material requirement, purchase, capex, IT, HCM, etc.

Step 7: Once the executive committee and CFO’s office receives data from business units/ zones it is verified with respect to:

  • Pricing of products
  • Impact of promotion on volumes
  • Cost per unit for variable cost line items
  • Capture and allocation of fixed costs
  • Authenticity of the numbers
  • Completeness of data
  • Relevance of data

Step 8: The CFO’s office prepares an income statement and does a profitability analysis of planned numbers. The planned numbers are evaluated against the goals/business objectives setup by the executive committee, which then provides its recommendation to business units/ zones (if deviation occurs).

Step 9: Business units/ zones review the recommendations and incorporate it in consultation with the executive committee and CFO’s office to finalize the plan.

Step 10: The finalized business unit/ zone and aggregated corporate level plans are sent to the CEO’s office for approval.

Step 11: Once CEO approves the Annual Operating Plan and Strategic Plan, the executive committee consolidates all planned numbers (making changes if suggested by the CEO).

Step 12: Following approval from CEO, the plan is sent to the board for approval.

Step 13: On approval, the plan is published and locked for the future performance management.

Step 14: The CFO’s office reviews the plan monthly and compares budget vs. actual. The reasons for variances (on feedback from respective departments) are analyzed with action items. This is reviewed with the business for root cause analysis and shared as input for the rolling forecast.

Step 15: Board, executive committee, management accounting department and GMs review the plan every quarter/ month as per the industry to forecast/re-forecast for the remaining period of the year.

Step 16: On review the root cause for deviation (both favorable and adverse) are incorporated as feedback for the next planning/forecasting cycle as corrective actions as relevant

How ABC Limited used the Intelligent Planning and Performance Management model – An illustration how short term Capex and Production decision can be logically derived through Intelligent PlanningĚý

ABC Limited is in glass bottle manufacturing for one of the leading global beverage manufacturers based in the UK. ABC Limited wants to evaluate its production capacity monthly against the demand plan and take decisions if the capacity is short or in excess.

ABC Limited has three product lines, each having 3 SKUs. The production plan is done based on the sales budget—which may require realignment based on any production constraints.

These steps explain the method for production realignment decisions. With ABC Limited the production order flows through three sub-processes (Furnace, Melting and Forming):

Furnace: Practical capacity of each furnace is 12 tons per batch with two batches per day. If any furnace line faces capacity constraint (cross 100%) as per production schedule, unutilized production capacity of previous period (weeks/ days) can be leveraged by realigning production schedule.

Melting: Practical capacity of each melting pot (2 dedicated melting pots for each category) is 201-meter cube. There is a need to test whether input from furnace (irrespective of realignment) exceeds maximum practical capacity of melting pot. If capacity is exceeded, the plant must go for a new installation.

Forming: Forming lines are interchangeable and the Pressure per Square Inch can be reconfigured as per the requirement. Hence, at any point of time, it can be changed as per the input from upstream production processes.

With ABC Limited, the Intelligent Production Planning model consistently re-evaluates future product demand vs. resource availability and reconfigures the operational/ production plan to maximize profitability.

How organizations can benefit from the Intelligent Planning and Performance Management model

91¶¶Ňő’s Intelligent Planning and Performance Management model centralizes all structured and unstructured data into a single source of truth, and provides these additional benefits:

  • Flexible production scheduling to address constraints
  • Precise phasing of capex decisions
  • Decentralization, enabling departments to become responsible for their budgets
  • Complete control over workflows with configurable business processes
  • Change from manual spreadsheets to automated forms/ reports streamlines processes and reduces errors
  • Ability to accurately analyze costs and base decisions on causal modeling scenarios
  • Ability to trace back all costs transparently
  • Allow the organization to determine which best practices are required to enable further process improvement

CPG and Manufacturing organizations wanting to create dependable macro level production planning can be sure to gain the ability to optimize their production schedules and manage constraints to determine impact on their bottom lines with 91¶¶Ňő’s Intelligent Planning and Performance Management.


Author:

Rajarshi Gupta
General Manager – Data
91¶¶Ňő

The post How the CPG and Manufacturing industries can improve outcomes using an Intelligent Planning and Performance Management model appeared first on 91¶¶Ňő.

]]>
Overcoming the challenges of conventional Planning and Performance Management through leading best practices /overcoming-the-challenges-of-conventional-planning-and-performance-management-through-leading-best-practices/ Tue, 15 Feb 2022 13:25:59 +0000 /?p=37664 The Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) function in the CPG and Manufacturing sectors understands the need to improve the velocity, frequency and accuracy of Planning and Performance Management. This is […]

The post Overcoming the challenges of conventional Planning and Performance Management through leading best practices appeared first on 91¶¶Ňő.

]]>
The Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) function in the CPG and Manufacturing sectors understands the need to improve the velocity, frequency and accuracy of Planning and Performance Management. This is especially true in a world where change can be forced by anything, from a pandemic to a policy change (to read about intelligent Planning and Performance Management for operational control and agility go here). Smart FP&A teams are going a step further. They are shoring up their capabilities by incorporating the latest industry-accepted best practices in their Planning and Performance Management systems. These best practices ensure they can confidently provide forecasts and guidance that align organizational resources to performance goals while maximizing revenue. The upside is significant. For example, improving forecasting accuracy to +/-5% or more can significantly increase shareholder value by more than 50% over planning horizon of 2 to 3 years.

The shortcomings of existing methodologies

  • Traditional Planning and Performance Management processes are a minefield of challenges.Ěý
  • They are manual, slow and prone to human mistakes.Ěý
  • They also present the difficult task of integrating scattered and non-standard data from varied upstream source systems.Ěý
  • The process is tedious but, more importantly, it does not allow teams to account for changes in business scenarios (new product introduction, new pricing strategy, non-availability of raw material/ talent, etc.). Without this capability, no business can respond quickly and accurately.Ěý
  • Workflow limitations in existing systems are an additional problem. These result in situations where accountability of various functions remains obscure.Ěý
  • Modern businesses also need to allow various users to access the data simultaneously and work in collaboration to drive consensus. These challenges and needs are becoming the prime drivers for organizations to re-visit and upgrade their Planning and Performance Management systems.

Depending on the type of industry – B2B, B2C Manufacturing or FMCG—an organization can change its planned numbers every quarter, if not more often, making it imperative to have sufficient dynamicity and flexibility in the planning and budgeting process.

Budgeting and planning data can be made most effective when it is distributed across business units. While this is necessary, it presents a security challenge. Organizations would like to make certain the data is made available on a need-to-know basis with adequate security and access controls.

Leading practices for tomorrow’s organizations

Figure 1 provides a comparative overview of traditional/ archaic/ poor practices versus common practice and leading practices including the involvement of reporting, forecasting and rolling forecasts. The figure shows the processes modern planning and management practices must possess.

Figure 1: Leading Practice

Many organizations invest considerable energy in identifying and listing the best practices most suited to their strategic objectives. The list can be dauntingly long. However, there are a set of practices that cannot – and should not – be ignored. These are central to dependable and reliable Planning and Performance Management that meets future needs:

  1. Ensuring corporate objectives are aligned with the organization’s budgeting process: This calls for transparent two-way communicable between the strategic planning function and the budgeting procedure. The goal is to map high-level organizational objectives with resource allocation. To achieve this, an organization should:Ěý
  • Formulate processes that allow top management to collaborate with teams directly involved in the day-to-day functioning of the organization.
  • Maintain a transparent and fluid flow of information across functions that participate in the budgeting and planning exercise—maintain a uniform level of understanding of strategic goals and explicitly state the roles each team plays to fulfil the goals.
  • Drive clarity of vision so that departments produce their budgets inclusively rather than in seclusion, leading to better coordination of tactics and support activities amongst the functions.
  1. Designing comprehensive budgeting procedures to ascertain desired results: A typical planning and budgeting exercise recognizes the factors vital to a company’s success and the ways in which those factors relate to the KPIs which measure business growth. Another way to look at them is as Business Drivers which can be further categorized as Revenue Drivers and Cost Drivers. Budgeting processes must be designed to ascertain these by:
  • Acting as a “sanity check” for the strategic plan, allowing only those procedures that turn plans into action.
  • Associating planned objectives with optimum resource allocation for process management. For example, if a target objective for a manufacturing organization is “less than1% defective products”, the drivers for achieving the same will have to be “ensuring stringent and state-of-the-art product quality tests” and “keeping track of products sold vs. products returned or repaired”.
  • Preventing functions from becoming over burdened with procedures and unnecessary levels of granularity. These end up making processes cumbersome without adding significant value. For example, budgeting at a project/module level is always better than budgeting at an individual line-item level.
  • Maintaining proper documentation with guidelines, accurate timelines, clear objectives, and appropriate resource assignment to enhanced efficiency and increased accountability.
  • Creating driver-based planning and rolling forecasts. The absence of rolling forecasting results in hiding the true picture leading to incorrect conclusions and decisions.
  • Integrating rolling forecasting with a driver-based approach by leveraging both financial and operational data to achieve optimal effectiveness of budgeting practice.
  1. Activity-based budgeting approach: Activity-based budgeting is derived from activity-based costing. Activity-based budgeting establishes the relationship between resources and activities and maps it to cost objects or services. This provides the actual cost for each object or service and aids in eliminating hidden costs, preparing accurate budgets and assigning accountability to managers who have control over the resources. Activity-based budgeting leads to:
  • Optimal needs-based assignment of resources.Ěý
  • Clarity on most and least expensive products/ services, providing visibility into real product/ service profitability.
  • Assessment of the existing efficiency of the organization, leading to decisions around capex investments or disposal.
  • Determination of appropriate cost baseline—which can be influenced through process or technology that reduces the effort for the activity.

These best practices, especially those with a 3-month rolling forecast, provide a dependable way for CPG and Manufacturing organizations to navigate volatile business environments. They are necessary to lay the foundation for realistic and real-time Planning and Performance Management.

  • Learn about intelligent Planning and Performance Management to gain total operational control and agility
  • Learn about the sequence of activities and authorizations of a typical planning and budgeting process of a CPG or Manufacturing company following industry leading practices

Leverage intelligence to improve your Planning and Performance Management — download our whitepaper now!


Author:

Rajarshi Gupta
General Manager – Data
91¶¶Ňő

The post Overcoming the challenges of conventional Planning and Performance Management through leading best practices appeared first on 91¶¶Ňő.

]]>
Intelligent Planning and Performance Management to gain total operational agility /intelligent-planning-and-performance-management-to-gain-total-operational-agility/ Mon, 14 Feb 2022 08:35:54 +0000 /?p=37657 The post Intelligent Planning and Performance Management to gain total operational agility appeared first on 91¶¶Ňő.

]]>

Finance veterans in the CPG and Manufacturing sector know the high price paid for poor and archaic Planning and Performance Management. This is especially true in a business environment where change can be unsettling. The solution is in the Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) function stepping in to ensure the organization misses no opportunity to maximize revenue, improve margins and minimize risk. In this series of three blogs, starting with this one, we will explore the evolving nature of Planning and Performance Management. The second blog will outline processes that meet today’s needs by incorporating industry-accepted best practices, and the third and concluding blog will present the sequence of activities and authorizations for a typical planning and budgeting process following industry best practices.

Today’s high-performance finance teams know they must go beyond traditional reporting. These teams must double up as chief performance managers, providing models, plans and forecasts that link business goals with resource management. However, most FP&A teams are handicapped by manual methods, spread-sheets and different information systems for collecting, consolidating and analyzing data. These outdated and time taking practices impede the ability of finance professionals to create business insights.Ěý

Broadly, the overarching goal of every FP&A team should be to provide a steady outlook across the organization through driver-based planning for sustained growth. This should be done without compromising turnaround time. Today, the average time consumed for a typical planning cycle is between four and five months—making the analysis irrelevant as market conditions have changed by the time the output becomes available. The process also absorbs precious bandwidth of middle and higher management (20 to 30 percent of senior executives’ time). Some organizations have attempted to place a cost on the planning and budgeting process. They have found it can cost anywhere up to a staggering $1.2 billion or more per annum.

Smart organizations are therefore aggressively eliminating non-value added and redundant manual planning and budgeting processes while pushing for best-in-class practices that lead to intelligent and highly flexible planning, budgeting and forecasting operations.Ěý

Intelligent planning and budgeting serve two key purposes:

  1. Management control
    • Through goal setting: Control is primarily achieved by setting up goals. The control ingrains organizational values (related to vision, mission and objectives of the organization) into employees.Ěý
    • By establishing boundaries: To make management control simpler, easier, and more effective, boundaries are defined to establish organizational limits and regulations on employee activities and conduct.
  2. Performance measures
    • Diagnostic: This acts as a lagging indicator of organizational and employee performance against an accepted benchmark, allowing the leadership to set improvement goals.
    • Interactive: A set of performance measures proactively captures organizational dynamics and feeds them to a coherent decision-making system to make the organization more responsive—allowing the organization to be prepared for exigencies and even be able to drive change proactively.

Figure 1: Intelligent Planning and Budgeting as a control and performance measure

Effective planning and budgeting processes begin by communicating strategic goals to the frontline (see Figure 1), followed by continuous two-way action that covers driver-based intelligent planning and interactive monitoring with scenario-based analysis.

The benefits of adopting planning and budgeting as an ongoing practice, rather than as an annual or a half yearly exercise, are substantial. By making performance management a continuous exercise, execution and forecasting remains accurate, allowing the business to understand the precise impact of strategic decisions while smoothening daily operations. A rolling plan provides assurance and confidence to employees, investors and other stakeholders.

The Intelligent Planning and Execution service of 91¶¶Ňő is based on the cumulative knowledge acquired through years of experience invested in analyzing the planning and budgeting cycles of our global customers. We overlay this knowledge with our expertise in deploying the most advanced best practices in the CPG and Manufacturing sectors (for phase-wise details of our practice see Figure 2).

Figure 2: 91¶¶Ňő’s Intelligent Planning and Execution Practice and Implementation Approach

The combination of industry-specific knowledge and subject matter expertise accessible at 91¶¶Ňő has supported the vision of CFOs and assisted FP&A teams elevate their function to effortlessly deliver reliable analysis and rolling forecasts through simulation and financial modelling. End result: Their organizations can predict business, anticipate change, dynamically re-align resources, achieve operational agility, and are in a constant state of readiness to respond to competitive and business change.

  • Learn about industry-accepted best practices for Planning and Performance Management
  • Learn about the sequence of activities and authorizations of a typical planning and budgeting process of a CPG or Manufacturing organization following industry leading practices

Leverage intelligence to improve your Planning and Performance Management — download our whitepaper now!


Author:

Rajarshi Gupta
General Manager – Data
91¶¶Ňő

The post Intelligent Planning and Performance Management to gain total operational agility appeared first on 91¶¶Ňő.

]]>
Powering the CPG’s Direct to Consumer Program with Insights to Improve Sales /powering-the-cpgs-direct-to-consumer-program-with-insights-to-improve-sales/ Thu, 16 Sep 2021 11:15:57 +0000 /?p=37075 The CPG industry has a new digital weapon in its battle to stay aligned with the customer. For decades the industry has been unable to interact directly with the customer, […]

The post Powering the CPG’s Direct to Consumer Program with Insights to Improve Sales appeared first on 91¶¶Ňő.

]]>
The CPG industry has a new digital weapon in its battle to stay aligned with the customer.

For decades the industry has been unable to interact directly with the customer, having to rely on its retail partners to provide insights into customer demands and buying habits. Now, it can use 91¶¶Ňő’s digital Platforms of Intelligence to gain direct visibility into customers (profiles, buying behavior, propensities and demands). This spells an end to futile trade promotion spends of which 70%, frustratingly, go straight to the retailer’s coffers.

The traditional lack of customer insights has many downsides.

These include field sales representatives being unable to take the right decisions and frequent out of stock (OOS) situations that lead to lost sales opportunities. This scenario results in alienating customers who then take their business to competition. 91¶¶Ňő’s Platforms of Intelligence for the CPG industry changes this. It provides valuable customer insights using supplier, retailer, customer, ERP, CRM, trade promotion and 3rd party data. The insights generated by the data can be applied to decisions around channel management, predicting demand, SKU and assortment management based on customer location/ price points, and help determine which retailers to work with. The outcome: Improvement in sales productivity, reduction in OOS, better demand forecast, and significant trade savings.

Compelling evidence available to support the effectiveness of the intelligent platform.

A Leading Diversified CPG Company A Leading Global Beverages Company A Leading Manufacturer of Household Products in the US
Improved sales productivity by 30%, reported an increase in ROI by 1.5% and a reduction in retail OOS by 1.8% after integrating global trade & commercial planning with intelligent platform Executed scenario-based sales and trade operations planning using our platform to improve 30% sales forecast and a 60% reduction in S&OP cycle time. Improved trade promotion planning with the in-built analytics on our platform. They recorded a 1.75% increase in sales in the first 3 years and unlocked 3.3% in trade savings.

Your CPG business can benefit from ITC’s Platform of Intelligence if you need to:

  • Address value-conscious customers and develop new products to suit their preferences
  • Leverage new buying patterns such as subscription-based choices
  • Understand why a customer prefers a rival brand
  • Create agile and intelligent supply chain
  • Create alignment between trade and supply chain
  • Improve margins
  • Improve the outcomes from trade promotion spends

An End-To-End Integrated Platform To Deliver Unmatched Intelligence.

91¶¶Ňő’s solution delivers unmatched intelligence using an analytical engine for segmentation, predictive and optimization modeling, pre-built AI/ML models to improve marketing effectiveness (and for faster implementation), and modular plug and play technology components to augment your existing IT ecosystem. Our cloud-based, scalable and secure platform comes with data visualization for self-service reporting and an intelligent virtual assistant to support your field force with guided selling and greater consumer engagement. And, in keeping with our commitment to deliver excellent value, the platform is available in a low-risk outcome-based opex model. The platform represents a large step forward for the CPG industry that has been challenged for decades in understanding its customers and leveraging the insights to improve sales, margins and brand salience. Click here to know more about our solution.


Author:

Venkatesh Agarwal
Vice President, Digital Experience,
91¶¶Ňő


 

The post Powering the CPG’s Direct to Consumer Program with Insights to Improve Sales appeared first on 91¶¶Ňő.

]]>
Hassle-free loyalty management for retailers with platform of intelligence /hassle-free-loyalty-management-for-retailers-with-platform-of-intelligence/ Thu, 09 Sep 2021 13:26:18 +0000 /?p=37064 Retail customers are spoilt for choice, CMOs need to accelerate customer centricity and drive loyalty.Ěý Today’s retail customers are spoilt for choice and are being drawn in by never-before convenience. […]

The post Hassle-free loyalty management for retailers with platform of intelligence appeared first on 91¶¶Ňő.

]]>
Retail customers are spoilt for choice, CMOs need to accelerate customer centricity and drive loyalty.Ěý

Today’s retail customers are spoilt for choice and are being drawn in by never-before convenience. As a result, customer loyalty is on the decline. Retailers have to constantly invest in product innovation, promos, expensive engagement and margin-eroding incentives— despite this, customer loyalty eludes most retailers. In the US, loyalty is severely fragmented. On an average, customers belong to 14.8 retail loyalty programs and are active in 6.7. The challenge before retail CMOs is to create meaningful offers that generate incremental repeat business. But CMOs don’t have adequate customer insights to create personalized and effective one-on-one interactions that are the bedrock for emotional connects with customers. This is why their loyalty programs show poor ROI. Now, technology has a powerful solution. ROI can be improved by leveraging Platform of Intelligence that accelerate customer centricity and drive loyalty.

A Platform of Intelligence for Retail CMOsĚý

It works to integrate siloed data across category and customer management and the plan, execute and monitor functions of retail trade promotion and sales. It uses analytics, algorithms, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to create customer insights. These allow the platform to answer critical questions like “When, what and why does Customer X buy?” The platform then matches the customer insights to its library of personas and spews out next best actions. Using this, the marketing team can confidently take informed decisions in real time that result in increased customer loyalty and growing share of wallet.

Delivered Business Value for Retailers

A Leading international retailer A South African retailer A Leading health food and wellbeing retailerĚý
21% increase in email responses, a 2% lift

in redemption rate, and a 5% improvement in customer spend through hyper-personalization

Improved sales by 5%, store utilization by 15% and reduced marketing spends by 5%. Delivered a 1% increase in margin and a 2% increase in overall sales and achieved 17% ROI and improved customer retention by 18%. Integrated CRM, Customer Loyalty and the insights system to enhance customer experience through personalized campaigns.

Your retail business can benefit from 91¶¶Ňő’s Platform of Intelligence if you have:

  • Limited line of vision across touch points
  • Suboptimal customer engagement across apps, websites and social media
  • Distributed data across platformsĚý
  • Long conversion cycles that impact profit

An End-to-End Integrated Platform for Marketing Leaders

The 91¶¶Ňő solution combines analytics, real time recommendations, real-time campaign automation and even a scalable, intelligent virtual assistant that creates outstanding customer engagement. As ancillary benefits, retailers can leverage the data generated by the platform to predict demand, prevent lost sales and manage inventory levels with precision. Plus, the solution comes in a risk-free, outcome-linked, zero-capex model. In effect, the platform delivers hassle-free loyalty management. Click here to know more about our solution.


Reference:

 

Author:

Amit Tulshiram Derkar
Senior Manager, DX Offerings & GTM,
91¶¶Ňő


 

The post Hassle-free loyalty management for retailers with platform of intelligence appeared first on 91¶¶Ňő.

]]>
Taking AMS to the new level with automation /taking-ams-to-the-new-level-with-automation/ Mon, 30 Aug 2021 12:56:04 +0000 /?p=36808 Globalized businesses face unique challenge(s) posed by the scattered regions and customized mode of operations to maintain their applications. These businesses are forced to leverage a vast and diverse variety […]

The post Taking AMS to the new level with automation appeared first on 91¶¶Ňő.

]]>
Globalized businesses face unique challenge(s) posed by the scattered regions and customized mode of operations to maintain their applications. These businesses are forced to leverage a vast and diverse variety of talent and technologies to support their business applications, inadvertently ending up with hundreds of applications maintained by scores of vendors. Constant change(s) to applications & tech stack will throw continuous challenges. Even upgrading a simple meal ticket application can end up into a war room situation. This is especially true of businesses such as those in Food & Beverages or CPG space or other large entities at various global regions with mix of legacy and modern technology. These industries have complex supply chains and widely spread manufacturing plants, warehouses, distribution hubs and retail partners.

“Automation” is the way forward into traditional application maintenance and support (AMS) and take it to a new level of support. With one critical decision to automate AMS, businesses can minimize or eliminate teasing tech problems and stay focused in their business. Importantly, the decision delivers cost reduction, it consolidates fragmented operations, eliminates process gaps, and maximize productivity. Even better, the decision comes with a bonus: By focusing on automation, businesses can continue with their existing applications and processes without sacrificing user experience.

Automated AMS (AAMS) is an 91¶¶Ňő solution based on decades of AMS experience in the F&B, retail, manufacturing, BFSI and the travel and hospitality industries. AAMS is a quantifiable and customizable approach that comes with guaranteed increase in Net Promoter Scope (NPS), resource(s) optimization and cost reduction based on client base. Much to the relief of CTOs, AAMS also has the power to eliminate the dependence on vendors, unleashing flexibility.

91¶¶Ňő’s AAMS offering is focused on improving three key vectors: Customer Experience (via an emphasis on self-service), Operations Optimization (to impact efficiency) and business value services (increased effectiveness) with strong experience SLA’s (XSLA’s) which are beyond regular SLA’s. Experience SLA’s can only be offered by providers with strong domain expertise, efficient service model and automation complimenting each other.

Using highly sophisticated domain-centric playbooks, knowledge repositories, accelerators, application optimization techniques, and self-healing bots. The solution deploys customizable Integrated Design and Development Platform (IDDP), a feature of the AAMS offering, that eases the application build and release process as self-service function.

With IDDP, clients can release applications with over >95% confidence and replace their weekend release schedules with any-time-of-week three-hour release plans. Clients can also leverage a large portfolio of assets and solutions around application optimization, co-Innovation, cloud native applications, and more.

The AAMS portfolio offers customized services around:

  • Accelerated Transformation
    • SAFe agile AMS transition
    • Co-innovation charter
    • Cloud native application transformation
    • Application optimization
  • Operational Efficiencies
    • Automation led shift-left approach
    • AI-based resolutions and recommendations
    • User persona-based BOT assistance
    • Transparency through business metrics dashboard
  • Customer Experience
    • Self-service and self-healing
    • Process and knowledge assistants
  • Business Resilience
    • Business metrics-led support services
    • Tool based application assessments and insights
    • Incidence avoidance through monitoring and AI

A feature of the AAMS that our clients like—aside from the IDDP, Chatbots, and more—is the Customer Value Realization. This is a dashboard that extracts learnings from monitoring the existing applications. It helps answer questions like, “Who uses application & which function? When is it used? what is the value realized?” This analysis allows clients to determine and introduce new features while retiring those that have outlived their relevance.

However, the feature that tilts clients into choosing our expertise is that the automation provides an accelerated start, allowing us to acquire and shape data from legacy systems (such as those that may be in use for supply chain functions) and pump them into modern downstream mobile applications, portals or other digital platforms.

Bundled with features that make AMS simple and cost-effective, AAMS is the logical future for businesses that need to constantly improve their applications across sites, generating value for managements for the investments made in maintaining applications.


Co-authored by:

Ashok MVN
Technology Partner – ADM
91¶¶Ňő

Divyadarshan Jannu
Solutions Lead
91¶¶Ňő


 

The post Taking AMS to the new level with automation appeared first on 91¶¶Ňő.

]]>
Airlines With Accurate On-The-Fly Financial and Operational Planning Are Taking Off for Growth /airlines-with-accurate-on-the-fly-financial-and-operational-planning-are-taking-off-for-growth/ Fri, 27 Aug 2021 11:54:19 +0000 /?p=36791 Airlines operate in an unpredictable and fast-changing environment with legacy tools for planning Airlines have multiple brands and a host of alliance partners that make planning complex. A small change […]

The post Airlines With Accurate On-The-Fly Financial and Operational Planning Are Taking Off for Growth appeared first on 91¶¶Ňő.

]]>
Airlines operate in an unpredictable and fast-changing environment with legacy tools for planning

Airlines have multiple brands and a host of alliance partners that make planning complex. A small change can have a large impact on flight schedules, fuel costs, workforce availability, passenger safety, etc. Practically every function—from Human Resource to Finance, Sales & Distribution, Commercial & Planning, and Maintenance, Repair and Operations—is affected by change. But airlines are unable to control and mitigate the impact this has on customer experience and bottom lines. This is because each function is siloed and spreadsheets continue to be the most popular way to manage processes. The result is slow, error prone decision-making. This puts accurate financial and operational planning beyond the grasp of most airlines.Ěý

Progressive airlines are using connected planning to drive accurate & precise financial & operational planning.

A connected planning platform ensures that teams across functions can collaborate in real time. These platforms help them get away from their spreadsheets that are incapable of drawing insights from the billions of data points that airlines generate. Instead, the connected platform uses analytics and forecasting models to drive accurate and precise financial and operational planning in real time. 91¶¶Ňő, leverages its partnership with Anaplan, a leader in the connected planning space, to deliver cloud-based pre-built airline-specific solutions that improve visibility into operations, boost productivity and lower costs.

There are airlines like AirAsia Expedia that have greatly benefited from an Anaplan-based solution. The FP&A head of Expedia says they are now doing scenario planning and sensitivity analysis for the whole business across Asia and dynamically understand where the business is and where it’s going.

Effective planning by connecting applications and functions across the business using connected planning

Our experience shows that airlines recognize the urgent need for connected planning but are hesitant to adopt the solution. They feel they are already using other, more traditional systems that have been around for ages, which can eventually be leveraged to improve financial and operational planning. This is understandable, especially as the industry is cash strapped and going through an extremely challenging phase. There can be no doubt that traditional systems have served their purpose. But today, they impede speed and agility because of their siloed nature. Anaplan is the only platform that can bring about effective planning by connecting applications and functions across the business.Ěý

91¶¶Ňő is a Strategic Partner for Our Clients on Connected PlanningĚý

91¶¶Ňő with its domain expertise in airlines, CPG and manufacturing and its strategic partnership with Anaplan has built a Center of Excellence focused on Intelligent Planning and Execution with 50+ certified Anaplan consultants, 10+ solution architects & master Anaplanners, 60+ deployments across 22+ use cases. We offer services from strategy, implementation and managed services for the planning solutions and also help customers setup & scale their own Planning CoEs.Ěý

Our 3*3*3 Approach to Jumpstart the Program and Scale With Additional Use Cases

91¶¶Ňő can use its expertise to identify potential use cases aligned to your airline’s business objectives and set up 3 day, 3-week and 3-month pilot programs. The pilots will demonstrate proof of value and define a future roadmap. In the next 3 to 9 months the implementation can be scaled based on use cases and target ROI.Ěý

Our experience in creating Financial and Operational planning solutions across diverse industries has shown that starting cautiously works. It leads to a better understanding and appreciation of the potential that connected planning holds. If you want on-the-fly adaptability, improved decision-making, and accurate scenario planning to guide your airline business, a connected planning solution is an essential ingredient of success. For more information please read our Connected Planning Turbocharge the Airline Growth Powered by Anaplan


Author:

Amit Paul
GM, Intelligent Planning and Execution
91¶¶Ňő

Peeyush Goel
Industry Consulting Head – Travel
91¶¶Ňő


 

The post Airlines With Accurate On-The-Fly Financial and Operational Planning Are Taking Off for Growth appeared first on 91¶¶Ňő.

]]>