How Kimberly-Clark Uses RGM Analytics to Drive Portfolio Growth

Consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies face a challenging economic landscape coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic. The U.S. economy contracted in the first quarter of 2022, with gross domestic product (GDP) falling 0.4%, indicating decreases in private inventory investment, exports, and state, local, and federal government spending. Consumer prices rose at a 7% annual rate while Americans’ incomes fell for the fourth quarter in a row. According to McKinsey, “CPG leaders are facing an increasingly unpredictable and dynamic economic future, which will require thoughtful action to guide their business through the crisis.”

To survive in this environment, CPG companies need to optimize their revenue growth management (RGM) strategies. As explained by McKinsey, RGM is “the discipline of driving sustainable, profitable growth from your consumer base through a range of strategies around assortment, promotions, trade management, and pricing.” RGM uses real-time data and analytics to improve decision-making and unlock revenue potential. However, many CPGs struggle with fragmented data and misaligned cross-functional teams. 

Kimberly-Clark, a leading global manufacturer of essential consumer products, leveraged Snowflake and Snowflake Elite Partner Tredence to execute an end-to-end RGM strategy—from setting up a unified data model to driving optimized action alongside retail partners. Executives from Kimberly-Clark, Tredence, and Snowflake spoke in a recent webinar about industry trends and the role of data, breaking down data silos, and optimizing operations with data science. Here are some highlights from the webinar, now available on demand.

CPG companies face a number of challenging industry trends including rising costs and supply chain constraints. Lack of access to information exacerbates these challenges. Companies are focusing on costs and processes they can control, such as promotion spend and assortment planning. They are using AI to sift through massive amounts of data, identify behavior patterns, find issues, and distribute products to the right place at the right time. Finally, they are breaking down organizational silos and bringing reams of data together in one place to drive insight into action. 

Data is a strategic asset for CPGs. At the same time, data management and governance is one of their biggest challenges, primarily because of data silos. CPGs often have a myriad of internal systems that house internal company data, including ERP systems, other planning systems, and external data from POS systems, retail partners, and syndicated and marketing data. And all of these data sets are housed in different silos, making it difficult for business users to consume the data in a meaningful manner. These problems worsen when a company operates globally and must wrangle data from different regions and countries.

To manage these challenges, Kimberly-Clark focused on three areas: getting rid of data silos, gaining analytics capabilities, and improving governance and scalability. 

Kimberly-Clark embarked on a commercial transformation journey powered by RGM to sell the right product with the right packaging, price, and promotion strategy to the right consumer at the right time. The company set out to integrate RGM as both a mindset and a capability into core aspects of the business. The ultimate goals were sustainable profit growth, maximized revenue, and customer-centric insights. 

To accomplish these goals, Kimberly-Clark’s team focused on three areas: 

• A strong data foundation: Kimberly-Clark created a one-stop shop for all of its RGM analytics needs across the globe. This unified data model involves having harmony and standardization across all data—internal data as well as external data from POS systems and syndicated data from retailers and third-party data providers. With the help of Tredence, this unified ingestion layer enabled the company to take in data more rapidly and reduced time to value by 70%. 
• Action to insight: Kimberly-Clark leveraged advanced analytics to identify key opportunities for pipeline development and growth opportunities by monitoring or actionizing the critical KPIs that are generated on the RGM data platform powered by Snowflake.
• Global scale: Kimberly-Clark saw a significant opportunity to align its RGM capabilities and develop efficient, scalable analytics in all of the three regions it operates in across the globe: APAC, Latin America, and North America.

Kimberly-Clark’s multiyear journey to achieve these goals involved standardization of data, data governance, and partnership with global and regional stakeholders including Snowflake. 

The Snowflake Data Cloud helps Kimberly-Clark break down data silos and ingest, harmonize, and analyze massive volumes of data. Regardless of where the data exists or what format it’s in (structured data, unstructured data, or semi-structured), the Data Cloud delivers a seamless experience for end users, enabling them to achieve near real-time data analysis and insights. Secure, data-driven decision-making, data governance, and user access control frees up time otherwise spent parsing through data to work on data analysis and insights. 

To hear more about Kimberly-Clark’s journey unlocking growth through RGM, as well as industry and technology insights from Snowflake and Tredence, watch the webinar, How Kimberly-Clark Uses RGM Analytics to Drive Portfolio Growth.