Solving CPG and Retailer Demand Forecasting Dilemmas

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The retailer-supplier relationship isn’t arranged in the way most conducive to confident demand forecasting.

In this new report CI&T examines the demand forecasting relationship between retailers and suppliers. The report highlights pain points and opportunities for both parties, revealing a misalignment of data strategies causing ineffective forecasting. 

Key findings from the report include:

  • Suppliers’ highest ranking challenge related to forecasting demand was visibility and access to data. Retailers’ highest ranking challenge related to demand forecasting was scaling the data platform

  • Suppliers reported they were most likely to break demand forecasting down by geography, while retailers were most likely to report breaking down demand forecasting by channel
  • The majority of suppliers reported looking at sales data from the same month over years prior as their predictive approach, while the majority of retailers reported referencing the previous month’s sales to predict the following month

  • Both suppliers and retailers overwhelmingly reported that consumer-level data (gender, age, household size) is the most likely type of data leveraged for demand forecasting