cpg manufacturing einsights - hyperscale computing ebook

Time to Go Hyperscale:How Consumer Packaged Goods Manufacturers Are Creating Game-Changing Advantage Today

Time to Go Hyperscale 1

Executive SummaryGo big. It’s the new message of industry. From big data to massive, on-demand processing power, innovative companies are thinking huge when it comes to driving change. They’re using hyperscale computing to perform bone-crunching analytics, drive rapidly to insight in key functions across the enterprise, and scale automatically to meet business demands.

In this eBook, we look at how big data analytics, digitized processes,and hyperscale computing can make consumer packaged goods (CPG) manufacturers the new titans of industry again. These powerful tools can be used to transform front end processes, such as business forecasting and decision making, customer marketing, and product development and customization.

They also can help agile enterprises strip cost and waste out of production and plant and network management, while creating next-generation supply chains that behave like dynamic ecosystems. Coca-Cola and P&G, CPG superstars, show us how.

Read on to learn why it’s time to go hyperscale—today.

Table of ContentsWith Hyperscale Computing, Big Data Analytics Hit Warp Speed .............2

Managing the Manufacturing Business ..............................3

Understanding Customers in a Flash ....................................4

All New and Improved! The Constant Drive for Product Innovation .......................5

To Have, but Not Hold: Inventory Management Comes of Age .......7

Today’s Factory Networks Are a Marvel of Production ..........................8

Squeezing Unpredictability Out of Supply Chains ..................................9

A Look Inside Coca-Cola’s Black Book ......11

It’s Go Time ................................................ 12

Think Big with CenturyLink Cloud .............14

11 Benefits for Your Business ....................15

About CenturyLink ......................................16

With Hyperscale Computing, Big Data Analytics Hit Warp Speed Consumer packaged goods (CPG) manufacturers are on the cusp of an innovation revolution. For years, they’ve painstakingly amassed the insights they need to drive the business forward and streamline critical business processes. Progress has been slow, but steady.

Big data has now put radical business transformation within reach. With sophisticated analytics tools, digitized processes, and hyperscale computing, CPG companies have the ability to:

As the market rushes toward real-time decision making, manufacturers know they need to act fast. It’s not enough to sense and respond. Companies are predicting what’s next—and how to meet future marketplace demands.

FORECASTForecast and manage the business with greater accuracy than ever.

LET’S GET STARTED.

UNDERSTANDTruly understand customer needs and behaviors across all channels and interactions.

MANAGE Design and manage global product portfolios, while meeting market needs for customization.

STRIPStrip cost and waste out of inventory management processes.

RUN Run production at peak levels of performance across plants and networks.

OPTIMIZEUse tight integration and constant evaluation to optimize global supply chains.


Want to learn how hyperscale’s massive processing power can transform your business?

Managing the Manufacturing Business Enterprise reporting used to be a time- and resource-intensive business. As a consequence, executives were forced to make decisions based on business and operational data they knew was obsolete and inaccurate.

No longer.

Today’s leaders use data analytics and managed cloud services, including database-as-a-service, to:


Cloud-driven intelligence can help you anticipate the industry changes of tomorrow —while managing your business today.

MAXIMIZEFuse historical, real-time, and forecasting data to anticipate future demand accurately, enabling their companies to maximize the power of just-in-time manufacturing capabilities.

UNDERSTANDUnderstand key relationships between manufacturing, business, and plant performance.

LEVERAGELeverage different analytical models to make the right bets on markets, product lines, and supply chain opportunities.

MANAGEManage complex, interdependent supplier and partner networks efficiently.


Understanding Customers in a Flash Leading CPG companies are constantly mining for gold: combining structured data from company databases and online systems with the vast world of unstructured data to get closer to their customers.

Manufacturers track customer behavior across all of their channels and interactions to develop rich, 360-degree profiles and predictive capabilities about what they’ll do next.

These companies use big data, cloud computing, and analytics to:

Empower your marketers, product design, and IT teams—to perform constant test-and-learn marketing experiments with hyperscale computing, modeling how different product combinations, varieties, and pricing affect consumer response.

IDENTIFY high-value customers and provide them with differentiated products and services for greater revenues and retention.

DESIGN & DEPLOY marketing campaigns in just days, for faster responsiveness to changing customer demand.

SERVE

emerging markets, which offer the greatest growth opportunity over the next decade, but will require mass-customized products due to their incredible diversity.

PROVIDE

real-time product offers for higher ROI and per-customer spend.

SIFT

through a wealth of data, using social listening and analytics tools to constantly monitor consumer sentiment, as well as harness networks and influencers to drive engagement and product sales.

All New and Improved! The Constant Drive for Product Innovation In an era of big data, product innovation has simultaneously gotten both easier and harder.

Real-time market data has taken much of the guesswork out of designing and launching new products. However, both new and established markets are demanding greater variety, requiring that companies manage ever-growing product portfolios, increasing complexity.



1 Peter High, “Data Analytics Allows P&G To Turn on a Dime,” CIO Insight, May 3, 2013. http://www.cioinsight.com/it-strategy/big-data/data-analytics-allows-pg-to-turn-on-a-dime.

RAPIDLY DRIVEto insights on the performance and future of individual brands, product lines, and product varieties.

ENSURE

the success of high-profile, multi-million dollar product launches by matching innovation to real needs.

INVOLVE

customers in brainstorming new ideas and customizing products through open innovation networks, rules engines, and configurators.

Procter & Gamble uses virtual technology to assemble virtual products, packaging, retail shelves, and stores, refining designs with customer insights. This has been revolutionary, saving us millions of dollars and dramatically accelerating the time it takes to launch a new product in market. Virtual solutions are now used on more than 80 percent of our initiatives.1

Filippo Passerini, CIO and Group President of Global Business Services,

Procter & Gamble

Manufacturers can use big data and cloud capabilities to:

To Have, but Not Hold: Inventory Management Comes of Age For many manufacturers, success is in the margins.

That means keeping raw material and finished inventory to a minimum.

These companies use hyperscale computing to:

ENHANCE

forecasting and just-in-time raw material delivery processes, reducing the cost and risk of holding obsolete inventory.

ANTICIPATE demand shifts, decreasing the risk of out-of-stock materials that slow or stop production processes.

MONITOR

inventory, production processes, and distribution of products representing millions of SKUs, acquiring real-time insights into the manufacturing life cycle.



Today’s Factory Networks Are a Marvel of Production Running a factory at peak production is a triumph of process optimization.

Today’s manufacturers are using big data tool sets and the cloud to:

Hyperscale computing helps you optimize performance across entire networks of factories.

ASSESSand optimize critical inputs, such as raw material usage, projected demand, staffing, machine capacity, and dynamic pricing, to increase margins.

STUDY

the impact of different production parameters, using analytics to determine which process improvements will drive yields.2

DRIVE

continuous improvement initiatives forward, by predicting process defects or machinery breakdowns.

OPTIMIZEuse of high-value production assets, decreasing labor and maintenance costs while driving daily throughput.

RUN

Monte Carlo simulations to identify production bottlenecks and the different outcomes of interventions.3

2 Eric Auschitzky, Markus Hammer, and Agesan Rajagopaul, “How Big Data Can Improve Manufacturing,” McKinsey & Company, July 2014, http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/operations/how_big_data_can_improve_manufacturing.

3 Rajat Dhawan, Kunwar Singh, Ashish Tuteja, “When Big Data Goes Lean,” McKinsey & Company, February 2014, http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/operations/when_big_data_goes_lean.

http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/operations/how_big_data_can_improve_manufacturing

http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/operations/when_big_data_goes_lean


Squeezing Unpredictability Out of Supply Chains With ERP systems, digitized processes, and data sciences, it has become much easier to manage product, information, and financial flows.

However, even global companies still struggle with optimizing key supply chain processes.


Manufacturing companies that use managed cloud services can:

LEVERAGEhistorical and real-time data to turn production dashboards into valuable indicators of manufacturing efficiency and effectiveness.

MODEL

the impact of using different raw materials, creating the right combination of inputs to achieve cost targets.

FORM

dynamic ecosystems, sharing data and making collective decisions to serve shared customers.

ACCESSonline reporting data and monitor factory networks remotely, making continual changes to drive production performance.

USE predictive capabilities to understand how external factors, such as weather patterns, input shortages or pricing changes, or changing or adding vendors, will impact their operations.

RATIONALIZEtheir supplier bases, gaining pricing advantages from consolidating and negotiating contracts.

CONNECTdirectly with retailers via shared data warehouses and digitized processes, reducing errors and out-of-stocks.


A Look Inside Coca-Cola’s Black Book Coca-Cola’s Black Book model is designed to ensure its Simply Orange juice has a consistent taste 12 months of the year despite a three-month growing cycle for peak flavor.4

The algorithm:

ANALYZES

up to 1 quintillion decision variables.

COMBINES

data sets including satellite imagery, weather data, expected crop yields, cost pressures, regional consumer preference, data on the 600 flavors that make up an orange, and other variables such as acidity or sweetness.

TELLS

Coca-Cola how to blend the orange juice to create a consistent taste across all units.

4 “How Coca-Cola Takes a Refreshing Approach to Big Data,” BigData-Startups.com, 2013, http://www.bigdata-startups.com/BigData-startup/coca-cola-takes-refreshing-approach-big-data/.

BigData-Startups.com

http://www.bigdata-startups.com/BigData-startup/coca


It’s Go Time Your business is moving fast. Make sure competitors aren’t moving faster. To increase their competitive edge, CPG manufacturers must leverage the power of big data and managed cloud services.

Hyperscale computing offers instant access to incredible raw computing power provided by tens of thousands of servers offering myraid petabytes of storage.

While Google and Facebook build and operate their own data centers, you can now get access to that same computing power from CenturyLink and Microsoft.


HANDLE

big data volumes and large workloads without hampering business operations.

USE

hyperscale and auto scale services to meet demand bursts for your company and its customers.

GROW

rapidly to take advantage of new business opportunities.

PERFORMreal-time analytics to gain game-changing insights.

HOST

mission-critical applications in the cloud, increasing availability and reliability.

DRIVE

batch processing jobs down from days to seconds, enabling instant responsiveness.

LAUNCHand manage next-generation apps.

With Hyperscale computing, manufacturers can:

“ CenturyLink has been cited as a visionary market leader for cloud infrastructure in Gartner’s latest magic quadrant report.”

http://go.centurylinkcloud.com/2014MQ-IaaS?utm_source=media&utm_medium=pressrelease&utm_campaign=MQComm52114#

http://go.centurylinkcloud.com/2014MQ-IaaS?utm_source=media&utm_medium=pressrelease&utm_campaign=MQComm52114#

Think Big with CenturyLink Cloud Hyperscale computing providers can provide you with the exceptional power, instant availability, and reliability you need to achieve breakthrough advantages with big data.

But it’s important to choose the right partner. Here’s why CenturyLink and Microsoft offer you the best solution and capabilities in the market.




100% flash storage

high-performance compute power

MANAGED

+ +Performance equal/greater to 15,000 input/output operations per second (IOPS).

The leading hyperscale solution =




100% flash storage


MANAGED

+ +

Lightning-Fast Speeds

Automatic Scaling

Self- Service

Instant Path to Insight

Performance equal/greater to 15,000 input/output operations per second (IOPS).





Delivered from 13 global data center locations worldwide.

100% flash storage


MANAGED

+ +


Automatic Scaling

Self Service



Ranked by Cloud Harmony to be among the best in the industry.



http://go.centurylinkcloud.com/CloudHarmonyReport



Delivered from 13 global data center locations worldwide.

100% flash storage


MANAGED

+ +

RETAILERS GAIN:

Speed-to-market

Instant availability

Business flexibility

Security and regulatory compliance

Cost-effective solution

PERFECT FOR:

Web-scale workloads

Big data analytics

Next-generation applications


Automatic Scaling

Self Service



Ranked by Cloud Harmony to be among the best in the industry.



http://go.centurylinkcloud.com/CloudHarmonyReport

http://www.centurylinkcloud.com/hyperscale/

11 Benefits for Your Business

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Scale automatically to meet business demands without

having to overprovision CenturyLink Managed Microsoft SQL Servers

resources upfront or guess what resources you will need.

Quickly provision Microsoft SQL Servers into

the CenturyLink Cloud directly from the CenturyLink Cloud

Control portal.

Build compliant applications on our hybrid cloud solutions. We are compliant with SSAE

16, ISAE 3402, SAS70 and ITIL and possess deep FISMA,

HIPPA, and PCI experience.

Go hyperscale by leveraging CenturyLink Cloud’s

high-performance compute with 100% flash storage to

turbo-charge performance to at least 15,000 input-output

operations per seconds (IOPS) over 10Gbps networks.

Ensure continuous availability with Microsoft SQL Server

2014 AlwaysOn’s functionality. Geodiverse availability groups

provide built-in redundancy of your critical data.

Access leading security including server updates,

physical security, and customer-specific

data security.

Change the game with in-memory to increase the

speed of new and existing SQL Server apps, accelerate time

to insights, and run important workloads faster than ever.

Perform data-intensive business analytics without causing any disruption to

your operations or the customer experience.

Leverage top-notch hardware. Each CenturyLink Cloud node offers 70% max allocation to accommodate spikes, 100%

flash storage, 10Gb networking, and limitless customization

and configuration of compute, memory, storage.

Maintain control using blueprints to model complex

server environments and reuse them easily. Configure autoscale policies for CPUs “vertically” on a per-server

basis, setting acceptable ranges and thresholds.

Leverage availability groups to ensure business continuity,

isolate key workloads, and offload data backups, analytics,

and business intelligence.


About CenturyLink CenturyLink partners with Microsoft to provide exceptional managed cloud and dedicated server services with hyperscale and auto scale capabilities. We are pleased to offer the industry-leading Microsoft SQL Server 2014 platform to our global business customer base, providing customers with AlwaysOn reliability, business intelligence, self-service tools, and a full suite of managed services.

As the third largest network carrier in the United States, we offer multisite MPLS network capabilities, significant managed cloud experience, and deep network expertise. Our cloud services include “beyond hybrid” capabilities with standard integration between computing environments.

They include:

Get Extreme Performance Today!

PUBLIC CLOUDCreate AlwaysOn availability groups within CenturyLink Cloud, mixing traditional and hyperscale virtual machines interchangeably.

HYBRID CLOUDMix private and public clouds to create a hybrid data solution. Use public clouds for burst capacity, such as seasonal or unforeseen events. Remove the need for capacity planning or performance concerns with hyperscale and auto scale functionality.

COLLOCATIONCenturyLink is one of the world’s largest collocation providers. Use our services to integrate your collocation environment with our public and private clouds. This is an unprecedented capability that allows you to integrate into the cloud with existing investments, mainframes, and legacy systems.

MANAGED SERVICESUse our services to maintain, manage, and monitor your cloud servers. Access our 24x7 expertise for a flat hourly rate, ensuring your platform is always up-to-date and high functioning.

Main Phone: 1.877.388.4373 Sales: 1.866.728.8470 Website: www.centurylinkcloud.com/hyperscale

CenturyLink supports Microsoft® SQL Server

Contact CenturyLink today to get started with hyperscale computing!

cpg manufacturing einsights - hyperscale computing ebook

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