Accenture, a global technology solutions provider and consulting company recently sensitized chief information officers (CIOs) in the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry on modern technological trends and how to leverage on them in order to ensure effective utilization for business growth.
This was the crux of the matter at the recent Accenture CIOs forum held at the Sofitel Lagos Moor house, Ikoyi, Lagos where CIOs from the FMCG sector gathered to brainstorm on modern technological trends, what to deploy for enhanced productivity and how to combine legacy technology with latest innovation, as well as mobility, cloud services and big data analytics.
Speaking at the event, Mr. Niyi Yusuf, country managing director, Accenture Nigeria, said the forum was on how Accenture shares its own thought on technology trends which the FMCG companies should be aware of and also take advantage of.
Yusuf said there is a lot of technology trend in the environment which includes social, mobile, analytics and cloud (SMAC) that companies in the sector can leverage on for better performance, and that coupled with the large population and high rate of mobile and Internet penetration in Nigeria, these organizations stand a good chance of adopting new trends for business growth.
“We are the second largest country in the world where people access Internet on their mobile phones and what does that portend for a company in the FMCG sector, it boosts interest and it is also an opportunity. If you have a workforce that is mobile, also consumers that are mobile, you need to be mobile, to be where your customers are, as lots of Nigerians are on Yahoo, Google, Facebook and other social media platform, and if a consumer has bad experience about a product he can post it on the social media and it would spread wide.
“So it is an opportunity for FMCG companies to be social and also be able to respond, and another advantage is that lot of companies would be able to sell their goods and services on the social media,” he stated.
According to him, having done that, it is also an opportunity for those companies to have information about their goods and services, an opportunity for them to track their goods, which stock keeping unit (SKU) is moving, and that it is real time information online which is data analytics.
“So analytics enables them to know which consumers buy and do not, and then they can track online, and because most of the consumers are mobile and sales are online, they will be able to know the location where sales is high and low, and the products that are purchased,” he said.
The Accenture boss however affirmed that the forum enables the CIOs to note these trends and to respond to them.
He added that the social media and technological platforms would help them increase the revenue of the FMCG companies, as well as reduce their cost of operation.
Yusuf explained that Accenture helps them to think through what they need to do and assist them on how to implement the technologies.
However during the online presentation, Mr. Shyam Ranchod, digital transformation lead, Products, and Tielman Botha, senior manager, Mobility Services Lead, both of Accenture South Africa, amongst others spoke on how FMCG companies can adopt technology in a digital era.
Botha explained that in Africa, Internet access is all about mobile and that if companies place emphasis on it, they can easily connect with their customers.
Ranchod in his presentation affirmed that in 2015, it is no longer enough to see companies adopt technology, but should look at it in a local way to suit their operating environment, to meet customers’ needs.
He stated that in the digital era, businesses are required to extend their boundaries in order to survive, by leveraging on key concepts such as the Internet of me, the use of big data analytic; outcome economy which is the use of machine to machine (M2M); platform (r) evolution which is related with open source and Internet of things (IoT); and intelligence enterprise which is the use of machine intelligence in both software and hardware.