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Product Lifecycle Management
Posted By:
Trace One
Consumer Packaged Goods (CPGs) and Private Label retailers vastly improve their sourcing
with Trace One PLM supplier management tools to create speed-to-market and strengthen
supplier relationships.
In the past few years, keeping track of rapidly shifting supplier networks has frustrated
retailers, especially when overproduction, inflation, economic pressures and sustainable
product requirements keep shifting. Trustworthy suppliers emerge and then, once retailers
align with them, consumer pressure or new regulations force them to change suppliers to
compete. When 90% of retailers say finding a new product is an opportunity to gain a
competitive edge, e-sourcing will be crucial to gain market share. Nimble supply chains
create faster launches and allow companies to satisfy consumers with the new products
they crave.
Retailers steer their businesses by the north star of compliance, so they must deeply
vet suppliers and expertly collaborate with them across changing markets. Private label
brands rise and fall depending on how quickly they can launch. They need true visibility into
supplier networks and into product quality, composition, nutrition, and sustainability. The
Trace One PLM suite offers the tools retailers need to achieve transparency across every
supplier, from discovering new suppliers with Trace One E-sourcing, to ongoing supplier
compliance with the Assessment module, and Analytics dashboards for real-time analysis
of product details. With these tools, CPG retailers can stay aligned with the market, their
customers, and consumers.
Assumptions destroy effective supply chains, block time-to-market effectiveness.
Many CPG employees create supplier workflows based on “the way it’s always been
done.” They assume that a specific supplier network is good enough because a huge
problem hasn’t occurred. But, as the saying goes, “it’s the little foxes” – the tiny details—
that can literally bring their business to a halt.
Replacing these assumptions with a more stalwart and clear-eyed analysis can
change all that. CPGs using the Assessment module in Trace One PLM have a single source
of the truth (SSOT) to continually monitor their suppliers’ ability to meet company
standards. When it comes time to source new products and suppliers, CPG retailers can
turn to Trace One E-sourcing for on-demand access to a constantly updated global network
of suppliers. Many of these prospective suppliers are already connected to a seamless
Request for x (Rfx) process. With these transparent supplier networks embedded in the
platform, retailers onboard suppliers, compare proposals, and request product samples,
certifications and packaging information at the click of a mouse. Analyzing current
suppliers and those in the database in advance lets CPGs move quickly to respond to
market pressures or consumer trends. Private label brands need this speed-to-market to
compete in crowded categories.
Compliance in the center of sourcing strategy
Without a centralized knowledge base for all compliance data, internal stakeholders
must scramble to gain a true picture of supply chain compliance. For example, a seemingly
simple task like collecting production site certificates can eat up time and frustrate people,
or, at worst, slow or stop, production. Retailers who establish a single repository of truth
can create dashboards to quickly extract a list of non-certified sites using Trace One
Analytics.
Without the proper sourcing tools, CPG purchasing leaders can’t make effective
supplier decisions. Missing data hobbles every attempt at a quality process for gaining,
retaining, and leveraging the best suppliers. With improved company data quality and
analytics, labelling, ingredient safety, sustainability and other quality markers get better
every launch. Manual and missing data shrinks while product and compliance
management empowerment grow.
Stop siloed supplier data to plan accurately and effectively
Nothing slows down supply chains faster than an information silo. Trace One customers
report their centralized, transparent platform for all supplier and product data has:
- Decompartmentalized and transformed their data into a source for powerful
decisions. - Leveraged Trace One Analytics to simulate scenarios and anticipate events,
helping them troubleshoot before trouble comes. - Transformed their assessment and management of product attributes like
nutriscores, allergens, contaminants, packaging sustainability, Corporate
Social Responsibility (CSR), and more.
Suppliers and their customers can work together, making risk prevention and quality
control a collaborative priority. When managing products together, CPGs and suppliers can
quickly modify product components, documentation, validation and other bellwethers for
a successful product partnership. Shared analytics dashboard that everyone can access in
real time drastically cut down miscommunication. Everyone uses the same templates,
reuses the same data and works against a standardized process to save time and money.
The Trace One PLM approach is connected and consistent, with data-powered decision
making when selecting suppliers using Trace One E-sourcing, that flows into formulation
and recipe management through the product lifecycle management suite, and real-time
insights at every stage using Trace One Analytics, making retail private label sourcing more
streamlined than it has ever been.
“Trace One PLM is an essential element of all of our business operations. It's part of our supplier startup. It's part of all of our new product and maintenance items, and development throughout the year. And when we talk about portfolio, we have over 5,000 active SKUs. We have 500+ suppliers that we partner with. Trace One PLM has enabled
efficiency and is a real connecting point with all of our cross functional areas, which makes projects go faster. Lastly, it has truly revolutionized how we do packaging for our brands.”
- Adam Sinley, UNFI Brands