Modern CPG Merchandising Takes Data, AI, and Meeting the Moment

Taking the Leap: The Southern Glazer’s Journey

While the benefits sound difficult to pass up, retail and CPG often find themselves behind the AI game compared to outside business markets. BevAlc, for one, is notoriously difficult to get buy-in for, says Alan Wizemann, chief digital officer at Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits — a primary reason the company sees it as an opportunity to embrace AI and leapfrog other industries.

Southern Glazer’s has been a proponent of unlocking value through insights, leveraging over 100 different data points to make recommendations on what its customers should carry to complement their businesses and complete their assortment, says Wizemann. 

One strategy has included keeping a focused eye on inventory through AI tools that analyze sales data, online inventories, point-of-sale transactions, and then alert customers when they might need to reorder. “We have captured some key learnings about how product velocity changes and how online inventory can be a beacon to what is happening in-store,” says Wizemann of a pilot it rolled out.

The company couples this with a market intelligence approach that integrates multiple AI agents and machine learning technology to examine customer strategies and experiences from initial order to delivery and merchandising to develop a deeper understanding of behavior and create hyper-personalized supply chain strategies across its network of customers. 

Progress in this space comes from a no-holds-barred, meeting-the-moment approach at Southern Glazer’s. 

“We have developed a strategy that not only leverages advancements in the AI space, either with new models or processes, but can take advantage of them quickly without changing our overall approach or needing to adopt new tools,” says Wizemann. “It has taken us over a year to not only design this strategy and platform, but it has also allowed us to introduce these technologies internally as tools to help our employees reduce the fear of these new capabilities and provide access and training for these tools for use in their day-to-day work.”

What companies often encounter are challenges related to jumping into AI without first prepping the workforce or allowing for the unknowns of new technologies, he adds.