94% Are Transforming. Only 9% Have Made It Stick

Nearly every consumer products company says it is transforming. Very few have made that transformation part of how the business runs day to day.

That is the headline from the EY State of Consumer Products 2026 report. EY and Oxford Economics surveyed more than 850 senior executives across 24 markets. Among supply chain executives, 94% say they are transforming the function. Only 9% say that transformation is embedded in daily operations.

The gap EY describes is not about a lack of data or a lack of ambition. It is about how fast companies turn a signal into a decision, and a decision into action.

The bottleneck is decision speed, not data

Most CPG companies already have planning processes in place. EY found that 71% now run Integrated Business Planning. The problem is what happens after the plan.

Only 14% of respondents strongly agree that decisions are acted on fast. Just 8% say their planning allows real-time, signal-driven replanning. And only 1 in 10 report a significant improvement in alignment between supply chain, commercial and finance.

In other words, the signals exist and the meetings happen. But each function still works from its own numbers, and time is lost reconciling them before anyone can act.

AI won't close the gap on its own

AI investment is rising fast. 73% of consumer products CEOs say their planned AI spend for 2026 is higher than in 2025, and 37% say AI already delivers measurable impact in supply chain and procurement.

Yet only 12% say that impact is linked to financial reporting and regularly reviewed by senior management. EY's warning is that without clear decision rights and integrated teams, AI may expose organisational bottlenecks rather than remove them.

An AI model is only as useful as the data it reads. If sell-in sits in the ERP, sell-out in retailer portals and in-store execution in spreadsheets, the model inherits the same fragmentation your teams struggle with.

Growth has moved into smaller, faster demand pools

EY's broader point is that growth no longer comes mainly from scale. It is emerging in smaller, faster-moving and harder-to-serve pockets of demand. In practice, that can mean a single channel, region, retailer or occasion.

Capturing those pockets requires spotting the signal early and responding before the window closes. Only 27% of supply chain executives are highly confident in their ability to manage that complexity and make the right portfolio trade-offs.

The winners, according to EY, will combine scale with faster decisions and closer coordination across functions. Speed now matters as much as size.

One view of the full sales cycle

This is where a single view of the full sales cycle makes the difference. When sell-in, distribution, in-store execution and sell-out data live in one place, commercial, supply chain and finance act on the same numbers. Nobody has to reconcile spreadsheets before the conversation can start.

That is what we built SalesData to do. It brings together shipments to customers, numeric and weighted distribution, field execution and sell-out from retail partners into one platform. A drop in rotation at a key account, a distribution gap in a region or a promotion underperforming in store becomes visible in days, not at month-end close.

It also gives AI something solid to work with. When the underlying data is already connected and consistent, AI-generated insights and recommendations point to the same reality your teams see, and can be traced back to the numbers finance reviews.

How long from signal to decision?

Here is a simple test. Take the last sell-out signal that mattered: a drop at a key retailer, a competitor promotion, a stock-out in a region. How long did it take your team to see it, agree on what it meant and act on it?

If the answer is measured in weeks, the gap EY describes is probably costing you growth. Talk to us to see how SalesData shortens that cycle.

Sources

EY report: Consumer products companies can capture growth by turning supply transformation into faster actions, EY press release, 17 September 2026. Survey conducted by Oxford Economics, 28 January to 18 February 2026.