SAN DIEGO, CA — At this year’s BEMA convention, attendees got an inside look at what BEMA Intel is and how it can serve as a tool for businesses.
Led by Jennifer Lindsey, vice president of global marketing at Corbion, the discussion explored current challenges affecting the baking industry today and what ability BEMA Intel has in interpreting them. She was accompanied by Jason Ward, president at AMF Bakery Systems; Marjorie Hellmer, president at Cypress Research Associates; and Josh Sosland, president at Sosland Publishing Company.
Jason Ward discussed the current increase of energy prices and labor costs, which create challenges attracting and retaining customers. He also highlighted the positives of the current unemployment rate — the lowest it’s been in over 40 years — and a high product demand.
“That’s a dynamic that’s favorable to investment and helps the high labor costs,” Ward said, sharing that he feels the overall effect “is still a favorable and positive environment.”
The group discussed how BEMA Intel organizes and highlights these trends over time in businesses’ data and the industry to spot areas that need improvement. The data is presented in an industry intel dashboard, which launched two years ago at the start of the pandemic, and includes data across multiple platforms to track consumer behavior on a wide scale.
Lindsey discussed how the program receives IRI data from product codes that are scanned when consumers purchase groceries. She explained this data finds indications of consumer buying behavior and recommends always looking at volume per unit sales as a baseline to ensure all indicator shifts within the market can be identified.
Data insights are color-coded for ease of understanding, with green representing the area doing well, and yellow or red indicating it needs to be looked into. In addition to color-coding, the program presents the data in bar charts to allow quick observations to be made.
Challenges and consumer buying behaviors can change at any time, especially during a pandemic, “but that’s the beauty of having this tool,” Lindsey said.
