Situation
In 2017, Reckitt embarked on a process of digital transformation to help secure the company’s position at the forefront of its industry. One of the company's main goals during this process was to develop an integrated approach for generating consumer and operational insights for its global network of more than 100 retailers.
Unfortunately, the point-of-sale (POS) data that Reckitt had to work with was far from perfect. The company relied on weekly data from an aggregator, which typically required an additional 24 to 48 hours of processing before it was ready for production. Data analysis had also been heavily siloed, with each global region left to conduct its own analyses.
In order to generate fresh, in-depth insights for its retailers, Reckitt knew it needed the ability to automatically collect data directly from all those retailers, onboard new retailers rapidly, and standardize reporting. Harish Kumar, director of data engineering and architecture for Reckitt, believed that improving data capture in these ways would allow the company “to build an end-to-end supply chain solution that could measure and manage how we move product from dirt to sale.”
Given the diversity among retailers across the globe, Harish also recognized that Reckitt would need a solid foundational software platform that would be highly customizable and could work with various models, markets, and regions. The company could not afford to take on a partner that would not be able to account for the granularity and variety of its use cases.
Fortunately, the company found Retail Velocity and its VELOCITY® solution.
Solution
Retail Velocity provided best-in-class tools and support that enabled Reckitt to connect directly to retailers and run its own global data processing operations from one version of truth.
The self-service, user-friendly VELOCITY solution has been essential for Reckitt's success in rapidly onboarding retailers. VELOCITY ensures that all the retailers can reliably capture the most important store- and item-level POS data, which is often unique to them. The resulting speed, quality, and scale of data acquisition—along with having completely cleansed and harmonized data—has “allowed Reckitt to become the market leader in terms of understanding the capabilities and power of data and leveraging data as much as possible.”
Reckitt also enjoyed exceptional support from Retail Velocity across the board. According to Harish, “The entire Retail Velocity team was there to ensure our success. Everybody—including the CTO and the president—was there with us, had their skin in the game and in the success that we wanted to see. They were always available for us.”
Thanks to Retail Velocity ensuring reliable data acquisition and engineering, Reckitt has been able to develop a centralized database as the single source of data for all of its data science products.
Results
Achieved "perfect data":
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Fresh, granular daily POS data—down to the store and item level—for all operational insights
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Rapidly cleansed, harmonized, and normalized data from disparate silos to seamlessly serve different retail models and global applications
Easy access to high-quality business insights for retailers at optimized and reduced cost
Established centralized, standardized retail setup and reporting from different countries to view essential KPIs
Rapidly onboarded 72 global retailers including 38 Amazon international markets, in 2 months using VELOCITY®
More than 1400 users were provided with insights from data science products in:
- Category management
- Supply chain planning
- eCommerce
- Performance-based employee compensation
- Promotion campaign optimization
- Forecasting
- Frontline sales
Reduced the cost of machine learning by 80% after switching to automated data models
About Reckitt
- Industry: Consumer Goods
- Location: Slough, England
- Operating Locations: 60
- Net Revenue: £14 billion in 2020
- Employees: 43,000+
Company Bio
Reckitt is a leading producer of some of the world’s most recognizable and trusted hygiene, health, and nutrition brands, which are sold in nearly 200 countries.
