Meet Graeme Scott-Dodd, Founder & CEO of FMCG Predictive Planning Platform AiM (Action insight Management)

What does AiM do?

The AiM-OPTIMISER^TM platform shows Consumer Goods companies of all sizes how to increase their profits… And that’s Guaranteed.

Built on methods from Diageo, Scottish & Newcastle and Heineken, the AiM-OPTIMISER^TM is a cloud based easy to use predictive commercial planning platform for FMCG sales, marketing and finance teams  to use when building or amending their plans.

Why is it needed?

Consumer Goods Brands spend 20-40% of revenue (over £200Bn pa) on pricing & promotions in retail but have to wait weeks for either internal analysis, external consultancies to complete data reviews to inform their planning or rely on disparate Excel Spreadsheets that often break. It’s hugely complex as there are multiple continually moving elements to analyse, which is why for many years getting pricing, promotions and terms right has been the industry Holy Grail. Quite simply, its difficult and just takes too long.

Over 80% of top Consumer Goods companies say they are not happy with how they manage this area currently.

How did you come up with the idea?

It was this frustration and opportunity that inspired founder and CEO Graeme Scott-Dodd to create AiM first as an FMCG commercial consultancy streamlining these methodologies and then (with Scottish Enterprise) bootstrapping the development of the AiM-OPTIMISER^TM Platform.

Soft launched in 2021, the AiM platform automatically analyses all the EPOS data that brands already have and accurately predicts volumes, optimum prices, promotions and terms etc. for maximum profit. It does the hard work and makes it easy to companies to self-serve and refresh when they want or have new data. Ideal for FMCG companies whether they have data or pricing experts in house or not.

Scott-Dodd says “Client Sales, Marketing and Finance teams like the clarity and simplicity of output. As it is predictive, it shows what will happen if I do X, i.e. Can I increase my prices? How do I handle inflation issues? Should I promote harder? How do I increase my profits?…and by how much?”

It is designed to be flexible so users can use as much or as little as they need, changing any input and seeing the profit and volume impact instantly saving weeks of work, resources and budget.

It also has a unique data-driven measure of Brand EAR (Equity at Retail) showing how strongly shoppers value each product so you know whether you need to invest in brand building or trade support to gain the best ROI.

AiM have recently automated both their Price Elasticity and newly developed Profit Elasticity tools (in the platform) showing what will happen to your profits or volume if promoting or moving prices. The sales volumes are automatically predicted providing accurate Revenue Management planning and many more insights to manage the P&L and sales negotiations.

It instantly shows brands clearly what to do, how, where and when… by product. Oh, and also what not to do !!!

Results to date have shown net profit increase opportunities between 3% to 11% for the supplier and accuracy across a year to over 99%.

What will we see from AiM in the future?

As a low cost, high value SaaS offering, AiM (Action insight Management) are now poised to help and/or disrupt both the £90Bn Consultancy Market and the Enterprise Software Market Vendors for Trade Promotion Management (TPM) and Revenue Growth Management (RGM).

The next stages are to continue to ‘spread the word‘ across the industry, create more partnerships, roll out internationally and develop the unique analytics engine into adjacent marketplaces (i.e. e-commerce, farmed goods etc). See www.aim-eu.com for further information.