P&G Vgrow Summit 2019 - Best Idea Winner for Automation in Forecasting

A demanding due-diligence  followed – a presentation, demo, Q&A and followed by a face to face intense discussion and Q&A on 28 Nov 2019.  We competed against 32 start-ups.  And we faced off with a major Retail merchandize platform in the runners-up. Out of 32 applicants NextOrbit got selected by proposing a very straightforward and effective solution which impressed the Senior leadership at P&G.

We have a detailed eye when we try to solve Demand Forecasting and Price Optimization which helped us to win the Best Idea Winner. Here are a few intricate questions we handled,

1. How do you account for the unseen event and how does your solution work on the same?
2. Does the solution work both top-down and bottom-up way?
3. Do you need to develop models for each granular level?
4. What mechanism do you have to handle product discontinuation and launch of a new product to substitute that space? 
5. With SKU_ID does not uniform across different stages of business, what approach would you suggest to uniform them
6. Not just customer payable price will affect demand but Margin to distributor/sites/ e-commerce /  Major retailers would affect. How do you account for these signals?
7. Please detail more on various cannibalization aspects and what statistical measures do you need to create as an indicator?

Published on Dec. 3, 2019