Due to increased household and government spending and a higher amount of exports, the Australian economy has expanded by
0.8 per cent in the June quarter, as reported by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
This increase takes the annual growth to 1.8 per cent. The good news for the FMCG industry is households are spending more on food as well as clothing and furniture, which will no doubt have a flow on effect for demand for talent in the sector.
Consumer insights key in brand strategy. Marketers are becoming increasingly exposed to consumer insights enabling them to become more connected with their customers. We are seeing more examples of companies using this to build their entire brand strategy by understanding when and how to access their consumers at various touch points. Due to this shift in strategy, companies are looking for data driven marketers, as opposed to intuitive marketers as has been the case in previous years.
SMEs focusing on local strategies and local teams. Working for an SME over a large business is becoming more attractive, with local SME team sizes increasing on average by 2.2% from 2014 to 2016. Creating local strategy, retaining existing customers, business intelligence and adopting innovative technologies to fuel growth are high on the agenda for our SME clients. There is still plenty of opportunity for talent with 70% of SMEs reporting they don’t have a CRM and only half saying they have a good knowledge of their customers, according to salesforce research.
Australia falling behind in innovation. Despite increases to government funding initiatives and tax breaks for early stage investors, Australian innovation has fallen to 27 th place in the 2017/18 rankings, scoring 4.5/7. University-industry collaboration in R&D and government procurement of advanced technology products ranked the lowest, with a score of 3.3/7. Our research on the Future of Leadership uncovered that creativity is the most important trait for leaders but there are four fears that inhibit creative thinking and innovation; fear of change, failure, risk and not meeting profit targets.
Sales leading the way in inter-functional movement. Traditionally sales talent has lacked interest side-stepping within the sales function. However, we now seeing many more instances of national account managers moving into category roles and category managers making a successful transition into national account manager roles. More surprisingly, talent from agency land are also
having greater success transitioning to client side due to their analytics and customer facing experience which is required as a category manager.
Integrated business planning (IBP) specialisation again a skillset in hot demand. As businesses acknowledge that IBP transformation programs deliver multiple competitive advantages and benefits, such as enhanced financial predictability and increased top line revenue growth, the higher in demand the skillset becomes. History has proven that the implementation of these programs fails without the proper human resources and relationship management, this means that senior supply chain professionals who can influence commercial stakeholders are in high demand.
Mhairi Kerr is a Senior Manager at Six Degrees, specialising in marketing and digital roles in the FMCG space.
