Crisp, one of the first programmatic commerce platforms for the food and beverage industries, has formalized a relationship with United Natural Foods Inc., North America’s largest publicly-traded grocery wholesaler and distributor. Using the Crisp platform, food and beverage brands will be able to share, manipulate and utilize UNFI data within their own business intelligence tools such as Excel and Power BI.
CPG brands can now monitor UNFI sales and inventory levels across their retail sales channels using Crisp. This connection between UNFI and Crisp eliminates the need for food and beverage companies to manually download and update their own analytics and business intelligence platforms, saving significant amounts of time and reducing data errors. It also provides real-time data integration, so managers always have access to the most relevant distribution data to keep shelves stocked and customers satisfied.
Additionally, customizable dashboards give managers the visual reports they need to quickly identify performance issues, voids, regional sales opportunities and other key business insights.
“Finding and delivering innovative solutions that help our suppliers respond quickly to new opportunities and insights is critical in this constantly evolving industry,” said Chris Testa, UNFI president. “This relationship with Crisp is a great example of how UNFI is helping food companies better leverage data to make smart decisions going forward and ultimately improve the service level to our retail customers. I encourage all our suppliers to explore this new offering.”
Analytics platforms supported by Crisp include Tableau, Power BI, Snowflake, Microsoft Azure Blob Storage, Microsoft Excel and others.
“Through this relationship with UNFI, brands now have access to valuable supply chain data,” said Are Traasdahl, CEO, Crisp. “With this improved workflow, Crisp is delivering higher levels of supply chain visibility to leading food and beverage brands and is helping UNFI brands use data to improve performance.”
Katz Gluten Free has already signed on to use the Crisp Connector for UNFI. Roberto Cruz, Katz’s marketing director, explains the value they’re receiving: “From reports, you can build insights and then build a data-driven case for additional items, increased shelf space or more merchandising. The key is to create value for our partners by leveraging the data to generate valuable consumer insights.”
