Nestlé USA Streamlines Data Management with UNFI Insights
Nestlé USA, a crucial division of the global Nestlé corporation, collaborates with distributors like United Natural Foods (UNFI) to distribute its products to retail stores across the country.
Historically, the business has faced significant challenges in monitoring its extensive product portfolio.
The solution came in the form of the UNFI Insights platform, powered by Crisp, which offers seamless access to comprehensive sales, inventory and trade spend data.
UNFI Insights successfully realigned UNFI's broad data with Nestlé USA's internal reporting conventions, filtering out irrelevant items and supporting Nestlé USA's efforts to focus on its leading products.
Nestlé USA transforms data management approach
Prior to adopting UNFI Insights, Nestlé USA utilised an automated system to import UNFI reports into an enterprise data repository. However, the isolated information required additional modelling to extract key insights and often contained critical gaps.
A further complication arose from Nestlé's UNFI vendor number encompassing data from other Nestlé organisations, such as Nestlé Coffee Partners and Nestlé Health Sciences. Consequently, the team had to sift through hundreds of additional brands and product SKUs to locate insights specific to their division.
Nestlé USA's implementation of UNFI Insights last year marked a significant shift in its data management approach and swiftly resolved persistent issues, such as missing store location details.
By properly organising this data to align with Nestlé's internal structure, each sales team could access the specific information they required, reducing the need for special data requests and enhancing team efficiency.
Subsequently, a master data management process – simplified by the Crisp platform – filtered out irrelevant products, such as those from Nestlé Coffee Partners and Nestlé Health Sciences, while bolstering Nestlé USA's 'Bulletproof the Core' programme, which concentrates sales efforts on the top 20% of products that generate 80% of total sales.
Nestlé USA boosts supply chain efficiency
“Well-organised data is essential in supply chain analytics. Leveraging Crisp’s UNFI Insights to monitor inventory in real time, collaborate and share data across the entire supply chain provided seamless communication that enhanced our operations and made us even more effective,” said Hugo Lopez, Director of Nestlé USA for UNFI. “Aligning the UNFI data with our product hierarchy is one of the greatest enhancements we've made recently. The platform presents data in an understandable way that continues to help us win across 1,500+ SKUs.”
With UNFI Insights, Nestlé enjoys the reports on each of its 1,500 SKUs, including supply-on-hand, year-over-year distribution, real-time visual heat maps, used in sales and inventory tracking and much more. Working with Crisp has fuelled clear visibility for Nestlé USA’s US$300m UNFI business segment.
“We work with thousands of CPG brands that face challenges with managing their expansive product portfolio across retail locations. By breaking down data silos and accessing SKU level sales and inventory information, brands can unlock new insights to improve manufacturing, distribution and inventory management,” said Barry Bradley, Head of Supply Chain at Crisp.
“Nestlé USA began utilising the UNFI Insights platform powered by Crisp in 2023 to resolve long-standing issues with incomplete store-level data. We’re excited to see how they leverage reliable reporting on more than 1,500 SKUs across their $300m UNFI business segment to support sales and inventory tracking.”
Nestlé’s Kristen Stoehr on supporting GLP-1 users
Kristen Stoehr is a Brand Manager at Nestlé and the founder of Vital Pursuit. She recently spoke with Food Digital to discuss her work and building a tailored approach to nutrition for weight loss medication users.
“Throughout the years, Nestlé has evolved to serve a variety of consumers and offer products that fit a variety of needs,” she says. “Our team's latest opportunity has been focused on the evolving nutritional needs and wishes of the growing number of individuals taking GLP-1s.”
Read the full interview here.
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