Magazine: Technological development in an optimistic mood

Ian Cook, CEO of Colgate-Palmolive and co-chair of The Consumer Goods Forum (CGF) told on the first day of the organisation’s Vancouver summit in June that more and more developed technological solutions influence shopping decisions. In order to increase consumer trust, the supplier side is investing in digital solutions and developing and modern business models. CGF’s other co-chair Mac Koeune, CEO of McCain talked about his worries in connection with supplying the planet’s growing population with food. He revealed that one third of the food produced at world level is wasted.

Peter Freedman
managing director, CGF

CGF managing director Peter Freedman called the attention of the 900 participants to how important it is to analyse data if companies want to operate more efficiently. With the purpose of better data utilisation, CGF initiated the cooperation of member companies in 2017. The project bore fruit but the whole thing was more difficult than the participants had expected. Mr Freedman opined that real-time product identification would be needed from all retailer partners for the project to continue.

Olaf Koch
CEO, Metro AG

On the second day of the summit L’Oréal president and CEO, Jean-Paul Agon and the company’s president for consumer products, Alexis Perakis-Valat spoke about how L’Oréal had used the retail channels of mass products for realising sales growth. Thanks to the processes of urbanisation and digitalisation, this growth is expected to double in value in the next 10 years. Kroger CEO Rodney McMillan talked about those challenges that must be faced if the world’s No.2 FMCG retailer wants to adapt to the changing needs of consumers.

On the third day Walmart president and CEO Judtih McKenna analysed the company’s transformation process, which started 5 years ago. Walmart has been focusing on a multichannel solution and given priority to the issue of saving time. They concentrated on the best practices of digitalisation, which are characterised by speed and flexibility. Alex Gorsky, chairman of Johnson&Johnson’s executive committee and CEO led a roundtable discussion about the cooperation of company heads. The participants agreed that executives need to find 3-4 initiatives that have a realistic chance for being realised, make sense from a business point of view and are valuable for consumers too. //