January 27, 2005

Accenture has acquired the CPGmarket.com group, offering the company a wider and more effective hold in supply chain collaboration in consumer packaged goods (CPG). Terms of the deal were not disclosed. This transaction marks the end of one of the few surviving industry consortia from the old B2B days.

CPGmarket.com was owned by 26 companies in the space, including Nestle, L'Oreal, and SAP, and provides sourcing as well as collaboration (including inventory planning, forecasting, and order planning) for CPG.

CPGmarket.com had more or less gone dark, putting out only one press release between November, 2003 and today. Like other consortia (including Covisint in automotive), CPGmarket.com had built up a wealth of functionality, though not yet an expanding customer base for it.

This is where Accenture, which performs systems and integration and consulting experience to the supply chain organizations of many of the world's largest companies, comes in with a cross-sellable client list.

In fact, Nestle, which owned a stake in CPGmarket.com and is an existing Accenture customer, has already agreed (alone with Danone and L'Oreal) to connect more of its plants to suppliers over the CPGmarket.com network.

Article by: Demir Barlas,
Source: Line56