Let’s begin this discussion with some facts which lay the ground for CPG Industry!

• Despite aggressive pricing increases of 8%, the CPG industry witnessed a 4.6% volume decline.
• About 75% of RGM programs fail to generate positive profit growth for both retailers and manufacturers.

So how to navigate CPG industry and get the best possible outcomes?

The answer lies not in quick fixes, but in implementing a comprehensive RGM approach that balances revenue growth with profitability.

Here are the best practices that leading CPG companies are using to navigate today’s volatile market.

1. Leverage AI-Enhanced Data Analytics for Demand Forecasting

When your forecasts are off, everything downstream suffers. Be it stockouts disappointing customers, excess inventory draining capital, or promotional planning becoming random. Traditional manual forecasting struggles with omnichannel complexity and rapidly shifting consumer behaviours.

AI-powered demand sensing is changing this equation.

Organisations implementing AI demand sensing are seeing sales growth improvements of 3-5 percentage points.
-Bain’s 2025 Consumer Products Report

AI powered forecasting and analysis of historical patterns, identifies seasonality, accounts for promotional impacts, and adapts to market shifts in real-time. It is moving beyond high-level product category analysis. These are granular SKU-level predictions across the entire account hierarchy. This precision helps to optimize inventory positions, reduce waste, and ensure product availability when and where it matters most.

2. Optimize Trade Promotions with Agentic AI for High ROI

CPG companies worldwide invest about 20% of their annual revenue in trade promotions, yet 59% lose money on trade spending.

~McKinsey

So how to optimize trade promotions ROI and control the leakage?

Start by evaluating your promotional history. Which promotions resonated with consumers, and why? Align your promotional calendar with natural demand cycles rather than fighting against them.

Modern trade promotion management tools can simulate various scenarios, helping you allocate resources to the highest-ROI activities while strengthening retailer relationships. Solutions like Profit Pulse by Polestar Analytics can maximize ROI with total spend transparency by-

• Instantly spot low-return promos and hidden leakages
• Build intelligent, AI driven promo calendars
• Optimize spend with uplift models, causal inference & advanced solvers
• Allocate budgets at granular SKU, channel and customer levels
• Strengthen retailer negotiations with customer-level ROI insights
• Improve net margins with smarter, data-backed allocation

3. Implement Dynamic Pricing Strategies

Pricing remains one of the most powerful profit levers available to CPG companies. Even small pricing adjustments, when informed by solid elasticity analysis and market intelligence, can drive significant margin expansion. Strategic revenue management through dynamic pricing is projected to drive 4.9% CAGR through 2028 – Infosys

However, effective pricing requires more than just raising prices! Post-inflation pricing opportunities lie in price-pack architecture optimization. It is about finding nuanced ways to capture value while maintaining competitiveness- Simon-Kucher’s 2025 Growth Playbook.

Understanding price elasticity by segment is crucial. Premium customers may absorb price increases for products they value, while price-sensitive segments respond better to strategic pack sizes or promotional pricing.

To execute this level of pricing sophistication, you need advanced capabilities that go beyond traditional approaches. You should be able to understand customer & competitor response to price moves with-

• SKU/pack/portfolio elasticity for smarter decisions
• The ability to run ROI-, revenue-, or margin-focused price simulations
• Real-time AI for base, promo & channel pricing
• Tools to reduce cannibalization and strengthen margin control

RGM solutions by Polestar Analytics provides autonomous agents that optimize pricing and promotional decisions. It includes –

• Price Elasticity Agents – demand sensitivity at product/SKU level
• Promo ROI Agents – true incremental gains vs cannibalization,
• Forecast Agents – baseline demand
• Spend Optimization Agents – allocate trade budgets with precision

By deploying these intelligent agents, it is shifting retailers from reactive planning to prescriptive, execution-ready strategies delivered in much lesser time!

4. Build Integrated RGM Dashboards and Tools

The complexity of modern RGM demands sophisticated tools that bring together demand forecasting, pricing optimization, promotional planning, and performance analytics in one unified platform.

• 55% of CPG executives now cite “investing in updated analytics products and decision-making tools! – SAP

1Platform by Polestar Analytics is a unified intelligence platform. It solves this fragmentation problem of siloed systems in your RGM analytics strategy.  By seamlessly integrating all data sources and providing a single source of truth, it operates within this unified ecosystem.

This provides one roadmap for pricing, promotions, trade spend, media, and packs. It helps with-

• Instant what-if simulations for any RGM decision
• Single source of truth for plans, re-forecasts, and promo calendars
• Faster, aligned execution powered by agentic AI
• Unified KPIs and connected workflows across teams

Rather than piecing together data from multiple systems, integrated dashboards provide real-time visibility into what’s driving profitability and what’s not.

How to turn CPG revenue growth management into a success?

Implementing these RGM best practices requires more than good intentions. It requires the right revenue growth management consulting partner.

Profit Pulse from Polestar Analytics provides CPG companies with AI driven RGM with agentic architecture, designed to transform decision making from reactive to prescriptive.
For organizations looking to elevate their RGM capabilities and implement these best practices effectively, exploring how specialized analytics platforms can accelerate your journey is worth considering. Learn more about Polestar Analytics’ RGM solutions and how they’re helping CPG companies transform data into profitable growth.