Unleashing data science to unlock growth

In a rapidly evolving grocery retail landscape where shopper behavior is changing faster than ever, CPGs must transform how they create actionable insights to move with speed and confidence. At a recent webinar titled “Unleashing Data Science: Uniting data and the scientist for business growth,” Barbara Connors, vice president of strategy and acceleration at 84.51°, explained how changes in the current landscape including supply chain shortages and inflation mean the tried and true norms for influencing shopper behavior can’t be taken for granted. She said today’s executives are looking to their data science teams to provide new insights on how their organizations can pivot their strategies to move forward with confidence.

Connors described how the demands on data are expanding and elevating to include not only descriptive insights that simplify decisions across scale and precision, but also democratized insights that can be consumed by multiple teams within the organization, and predictive analytics that give guidance on where trends are going and what future behavior will look like so they can make more informed decisions.

She also highlighted four different stages of cultural and technical readiness that 84.51° sees when talking to companies looking to embed data science as a competitive advantage. These stages range from teams that are just starting out to “Change Makers” that have already invested in data science and are aligned company-wide on how they want to embed it across the organization.

While each organization has unique objectives and obstacles no matter which readiness stage they are in, Connors says the core needs companies have around data science are typically quite similar. They include:

• Data: Data scientists need access to clean, quality data that can be trusted, with scale and granularity for broad applicability.

• Platform: Organizations should use leading technology partners that can equip them with the ability to code in common languages they already know.

• Sciences: Many data scientists are looking for access to expertise and prepackaged science to help companies hit the ground running.

• Coaching and Consulting: Companies need access to guidance and best practices on capabilities ranging from work design and problem framing to how to embed data science across the organization.

Connors explained how 84.51° Collaborative Cloud unleashes data science for everyone by empowering data scientists with 60 million households of transaction and UPC-level data that is clean and ready-to-use. Longitudinal analyses that can look back four years enable critical learnings that snapshots can’t see. This data science platform gives unaggregated access to 84.51°’s transaction level data to data scientists outside of our organization, to empower companies to get value out of data science, regardless of where they sit on the readiness spectrum.

One Change Maker company leveraging 84.51° Collaborative Cloud for a competitive advantage is PepsiCo. Jeremy Schmid, vice president of category, strategy, and data analytics for PepsiCo, joined Connors in the webinar and shared how 84.51° has provided PepsiCo’s data scientists with a new level of access to the omnichannel data they need to help them create new science-led shopper strategies.

Schmid shared a few use cases where his team has leveraged 84.51° Collaborative Cloud to equip the company with better insights to enhance business strategy, including analyzing self-checkout shopper behaviors, understanding evolving beverage trends, and even activating media based on the targets developed from these insights. He also praised 84.51° for its expertise and support as the PepsiCo team learned the ins and outs of this new and different data asset, and how to best build it out.

Connors closed by emphasizing that with the right pieces in place, anyone can influence business strategy with data science today, and that the organizations that will get the most value out of it are the ones that unleash data across their entire business to influence and improve strategy for better business results.