“Quick Bites” Recap: Generating Actionable Insights with Data Harmonization

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by Bedrock Analytics

February 28, 2023

Recently Bedrock Analytics hosted the first Sales & Marketing Forum put on by Naturally Bay Area. It was an event for local professionals to network with peers, exchange ideas, get inspiration, and build camaraderie with fellow sales and marketing professionals. It was a fantastic event that generated great conversations and real insight into how to grow emerging CPGs in the current economic climate.

Bedrock Analytics Founder and CEO, Will Salcido, also led a virtual event that day on Naturally Bay Area’s “Quick Bites”: Generating Actionable Insights with Data Harmonization

During the virtual event, listeners heard from experts sharing their thoughts on how unifying multiple data streams can save time, improve outcomes, and help grow a successful business.

Will was joined by Elissa Shewmaker (Director of Sales Strategy & Category Management at Kite Hill) and Michelle Potter (Senior Director of Category & Business Development at Once Upon a Farm). Mary Tarczynski, Naturally Bay Area Board Member and Principal and Client Solutions Lead of Parabolic, moderated the discussion with the three featured guests. 

In this Quick Bites session, listeners learned the key to profitably, managing and growing their business. The first step is to understand the importance of performance across all channels. You do this by pulling together syndicated data, retail portal data, eCommerce, and distributor reports to get a clear picture of performance and uncover insights that will help the business grow.

Below are a few highlights from the discussion:

 

Quick Bites: “Generating Actionable Insights from Data Harmonization” Recap

Prioritizing Data

Both Elissa and Michelle emphasized the importance of prioritizing data as soon as you can in whatever form you have it. A comprehensive data mix will give you more visibility into your category:

 

“Distribution is easy to get, but keeping it is even harder. If you’re going to keep distribution, you have to have data and a compelling story to go with it.” 

–  Elissa Shewmaker (Kite Hill) 

 

“I will say, I am forever grateful for the role that Bedrock played for our team in the early days. For our small team of salespeople who were wearing every hat imaginable, we really needed to be able to connect the dots to actionable insights in a format that was sharable and in a way that was user-friendly without a ton of upfront training. Having that strong baseline toolkit in place made our cross-functional teams extremely well-informed on how we were performing, what was working, what wasn’t, and how quickly we could act on that information. With that toolkit, especially the quick insights and visualizations I could get in moments from Bedrock, I was able to bring true category and thought leadership to our retail partners. We were able to quickly provide insight into dynamics they weren’t hearing at all from their big CPGs, which is a real point of value when you invest in the data early on.”

  • Michelle Potter (Once Upon a Farm)

 

How do you balance all that data with customization?

Regardless of the business you’re running, your data should always have context and be pulled consistently in order for you to draw meaningful and reliable conclusions and insights. 

 

“When toggling between different audiences, it’s so important to have one source of truth as the foundation when it comes to establishing and reporting on your key goals and objectives consistently. The harmonization piece is everything. A data point in isolation is irrelevant. It’s all about where you’ve been, where you’re going, what’s going on in your category and with competition and having those tools to really connect those insights and bring them to life.” 

  • Michelle Potter (Once Upon a Farm)

 

How is AI playing a major role in how insights are being pulled from the data and what’s in store for the future?

Will says we’re headed in a direction where CPGs will know what will happen to a product before retailers figure it out and before a product reaches discontinuation. The birth and the death of a product are two areas that are tough to handle for brands. Ensuring products stay alive and grow with the right recommendations will be huge. 

(Don’t miss the success story Will shares with listeners about a small canned seafood company that leveraged Bedrock to take out a giant competitor in one of the largest retailers globally, all in under 30 minutes!)

Watch the webinar in its entirety here (or below), and visit bedrockanalytics.com to learn more about how Bedrock streamlines data harmonization for you, saving your sales and analyst teams countless hours and manual labor.