Crisp is the first CPG-focused platform to join Snowflake’s Data Marketplace

Crisp joins the Snowflake Data Marketplace to enhance data collaboration in retail, leveraging the cloud to help CPG brands optimize their supply chain and reduce waste. 

Cloud-based collaboration

The cloud is becoming increasingly important to CPG operations and trade, from helping employees analyze company data to facilitating information sharing across complex global supply chains. Snowflake is on the leading edge of that transformation, enticing companies to migrate their infrastructure from on-premise warehouses into the “Data Cloud” where information is more accessible, economical, and shareable. At the same time, Crisp is harnessing the cloud to connect data silos in retail, facilitating near real-time communication between suppliers, distributors, and retailers. Snowflake and Crisp’s partnership is a step forward in the retail industry’s cloud evolution, aggregating data from disparate retail data sources and delivering them to a company’s cloud data warehouse.

Crisp is the first CPG-focused partner to join Snowflake’s Data Marketplace, a resource for Snowflake customers to supplement their own data sets with third-party or SaaS vendor data sources. Crisp automatically ingests data from retail and distributor portals such as Whole Foods, Amazon, and UNFI, delivering usable sales and inventory data to CPG brands wherever they need it. Accessing a data feed directly in tools such as Snowflake significantly reduces staff time spent pulling reports from numerous vendor portals and the potential for human error, which can lead to out-of-stocks or waste. 

While enterprise CPG brands have sophisticated analytics capabilities, supply chain data is often siloed, leading to hours spent per day manually downloading retail and distributor reports and uploading them into data warehouses. Crisp eliminates this cumbersome step, typically saving customers 10 hours per week from pulling reports and cleaning up data sets. This data can then be combined with other sources (such as CRMs, marketing applications, and syndicated data) for additional insights to spot growth opportunities, optimize operations, and reduce waste. 

Transforming the supply chain

Crisp and Snowflake share the vision of data access as the first step toward digital transformation across the retail industry, which can lead to meaningful business and environmental impact. As we approach Earth Day, it is important to recognize the key role technology can play in increasing visibility, optimizing operations, and reducing waste throughout the food supply chain. Here are a few ways that cloud-enabled data collaboration makes this possible:

• Inventory: With a real-time view of inventory across distributors and retailers, suppliers can identify when products are at risk of expiration and prevent spoilage. For example, seeing an excess of inventory at a particular distribution center, they can offer a product on promotion, and even target advertising campaigns around stores where that product is on-shelf. At the same time, brands can ensure that their product is adequately stocked and take steps to distribute additional product as efficiently as possible, without a fire-drill of short shipping.
  
  
• Sales: An aggregated, accurate analysis of sales and velocity trends can inform everything along the supply chain, including production schedules. The more accurate the demand picture is, the leaner companies can be with inventory. Demand trends can also drive product development and promotion decisions — which was particularly relevant with this past year’s rapidly changing consumption patterns. As consumers increasingly opt for meat and dairy alternatives, organic, and better-for-you foods at home, suppliers can be prepared to meet the moment.
  
  
• Distribution: As critical as this information is, suppliers don’t always have a clear sense of their product distribution. Crisp rolls up aggregated distribution data into interactive maps, helping brands easily understand how much product is headed where. With this information they can streamline logistics, directing product routes and trucks where they’re needed most. This is especially important for improving the efficiency of cold storage transportation, which requires considerable energy.

Evolving toward Programmatic Commerce

By breaking down silos and facilitating the flow of data, Crisp is working to enable programmatic commerce in retail, a model in which brands can stay ahead of consumer behavior, identify potential supply chain disruptions, track inventory, and more efficiently deploy resources. Cloud adoption is key to this process, helping companies improve agility, increase the speed of decision-making, and enable new business models. By facilitating cloud-enabled data access and sharing, Snowflake and Crisp will help CPG companies be data-ready for the challenges and opportunities ahead. 

To learn more about integrating your retail data with Snowflake, contact us for a demo. For more product news and updates, subscribe to the blog.