166 “ AI is not just a tool, it’s a teammate” DINA ZHOU, MICROSOFT The consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry is standing at a pivotal moment, in a landscape shaped by inflation, geopolitical instability and supply chain fragility, according to the Promotion Optimization Institute (POI). In addition, consumers have become more value-driven, digitally fluent and channel agnostic than ever. CPG organisations are evolving into media platforms, blurring the lines between trade, marketing and digital commerce. Meanwhile, sustainability, personalisation and speed-to-value are becoming non-negotiable imperatives for both CPG retailers and customers. Amid these changes, revenue growth management (RGM) continues to be a key strategy to adopt and, according to Dina Zhou, senior industry advisor for retail and consumer goods at Microsoft, “it cannot be a tactical lever but the engine for profitable growth”. RGM helps business to optimise revenue and profitability by aligning pricing, promotion, distribution and trade terms. Think of it as a guide to help CPG organisations answer four key questions: what products should we sell? At what price? Through which channels? With what promotional support? However, legacy systems, siloed insights and incremental thinking continue to hold organisations back from optimising their use of RGM. Zhou states that RGM remains “under-leveraged in many organisations”. According to POI’s 2025 State of the Industry report, 43 per cent of companies are still operating at a descriptive analytics level. Furthermore, more than half of teams lack the capabilities to The CPG industry is undergoing seismic shifts. Microsoft’s Dina Zhou shares why it is time to reimagine revenue growth management in the age of agentic AI BY AMBER HICKMAN FEATURE From to reactive regenerative
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