Dannon, a subsidiary of French food company Groupe Danone and a leading yogurt producer in the US, is using IBM cloud-based predictive analytics to ensure the delivery of the correct product mix at the right time to satifsy customers in the yogurt market.
With the use of integrated analytics planning, Dannon is able to improve real-time forecasting abilities.
The IBM cloud-based software and services being used by Dannon include IBM Strategic Trade Planning and Customer Trade Planning solutions.
Using these strategic trade planning solutions, Dannon analyzes shopper behavior through the use of big data and predictive analytics, to enhance trade investment decisions and make more accurate predictions on product volume and profitability.
IBM played a key role in helping Dannon's sales team to streamline the forecasting and planning process.
Dannon chief information officer Timothy Weaver said that the company aims to eliminate the time its sales team was spending on forecasting and instead focus attention on executing promotional plans, which allows them to work more closely with the retailer customers.
"Through IBM's planning solutions, we not only streamlined the forecasting process for our sales team, but we increased our planning accuracy from 75 percent to 98 percent, helping us to further distinguish ourselves as the leading yogurt maker," Weaver added.
IBM's Smarter Commerce initiative features software and services that help companies transform their business processes to quickly respond to switching customer demands in the current marketplace.
IBM Industry Solutions general manager Craig Hayman said: "Through the use of predictive analytics, Dannon is able to understand, plan, and predict their business in ways that were unimaginable a few years ago."
Dannon, headquartered in White Plains, New York, is America's national yogurt company, producing approximately 200 types of flavors, styles and sizes of cultured refrigerated and frozen dairy products under the Dannon and Danone brands.
