BLOG
Straightforward thinking on AI, automation and data - so you can work smarter and make better decisions.
AI & AUTOMATION
UK food manufacturing loses 25-40% of production staff annually. AI-assisted onboarding cuts 30-day churn by targeting the specific moments new starters disengage.
FMCG OPERATIONS
64% of CPG companies still mix digital and manual quality processes. Here's how AI compresses BRCGS audit prep from weeks to days for site quality managers.
AI & AUTOMATION
AI-driven reconciliation delivers up to 75% faster matching. Here's what genuinely helps a 2-5 person FMCG finance team cut month-end close from 5 days to 3.
AI & AUTOMATION
Where AI actually helps FMCG sales teams: trade deduction recovery, distributor churn prediction, and account-level forecasting. Costs, data needs, and starting points.
FMCG OPERATIONS
64% of CPG companies still mix digital and manual quality processes. Here's how to automate supplier onboarding and certificate tracking without an expensive platform.
DATA & REPORTING
45% of brand owners now use smart connected packaging requiring structured data. Here's how to build a product data master without a PIM system.
GUIDES
A practical guide to the 6 major UK grocery retailer portals, what data each provides, refresh schedules, export formats, and how to consolidate them. 36% of CPG teams cite fragmented data as their AI blocker.
WORKFLOWS
45% of brands now use connected packaging, yet most manage NPD through email and memory. Here's how to build a structured NPD workflow without a PLM.
SYSTEMS & INTEGRATION
37.5% of CPG leaders cite legacy systems as a blocker. Here's the step-by-step integration sequence that works for UK food and drink brands at £20m-£150m revenue.
WORKFLOWS
Only 18% of CPG firms have scaled automation. Here's how UK food & drink brands at £20m-£150m can automate POs without a six-figure ERP project.
DATA & REPORTING
SHS Group cut master data fields from 227 to 70, a 69% effort reduction. Here's how to audit and fix your FMCG product data without a PIM migration.
DATA & REPORTING
40-60% of FMCG operational data is already AI-ready but siloed. Learn the exact data quality thresholds for demand forecasting, maintenance, and trade promo analysis.
DATA & REPORTING
Most FMCG dashboards are either 40-tab Power BI monsters nobody opens or Excel sheets with no baseline. Here's the useful middle ground, with costs and tiers.
DATA & REPORTING
3–8 hours a week building Excel packs from retailer portals and ERP exports. Here's the step-by-step process to automate that without ending up with dashboards nobody trusts.
AI & AUTOMATION
Only 20% of retail/CPG firms have AI agents active. Here's what agentic AI actually does in supply chain today, what's still projected, and where to start.
FMCG OPERATIONS
What AI predictive maintenance actually costs and requires for UK food & drink SMEs. Honest on data needs, pilot costs, and when it doesn't make sense.
GUIDES
Data plumbing accounts for 40-60% of AI project cost. Here's the 5-section brief template that stops FMCG forecasting pilots from failing before they start.
FMCG OPERATIONS
Fewer than 30% of AI pilots reach production (Gartner). Here are the 5 structural failure patterns killing demand forecasting pilots in UK food & drink brands.
AI & AUTOMATION
75% of CPG companies are stuck in AI pilots. Only 13% have AI end-to-end. Six surveys dissected with sample sizes and honest caveats.
AI & AUTOMATION
43% of CPG companies say skills gaps block AI adoption. This 15-question self-assessment is calibrated for UK food & drink teams, not P&G.
FMCG OPERATIONS
Department-by-department breakdown of where AI works in FMCG, what data you need, what it costs, and where to skip it.
AI & AUTOMATION
75% of CPG companies are stuck in AI pilots. Here's what works, where to start, and how to run a 90-day pilot that actually scales.
FMCG OPERATIONS
FMCG brands average 14h 52m first response time and a -32 NPS. AI triage and automation cut handling time 40% and resolve 80–90% of queries without headcount.
AI & AUTOMATION
83% of AI pilots stall due to change management, not technology. A phased framework to deploy ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot or Gemini without disrupting operations.
AI & AUTOMATION
62% of organisations experiment with AI agents but only 23% scale them. Here's what agents are, how they differ from RPA, and where they work in FMCG.
FMCG OPERATIONS
15.2% of CPG manufacturing revenue is lost to delays, downtime, and rework. Here's how AI helps FMCG operations teams recover it.
GUIDES
71% of CPG leaders now use AI yet most pilots stall. Here is the 3-filter framework FMCG brands use to choose where to start and avoid expensive dead ends.
DATA & REPORTING
94% of business spreadsheets contain errors and teams lose 22 workdays per year fixing them. See where manual reporting breaks as FMCG brands scale.
AI & AUTOMATION
For FMCG brands, confusing automation with AI wastes budget. Here's how to tell them apart and decide where each one belongs.
WORKFLOWS
Most automation projects fail because they skip process mapping. Here's a six-step framework for turning manual FMCG workflows into reliable automation.
