The bottom line
Running seven systems that don't talk to each other doesn't mean you have data - it means you have seven versions of the truth. FMCG businesses that break this pattern and unify into a single governed layer stop arguing about numbers and start acting on them.
In This Article
The Seven-to-Twelve System Problem
A typical mid-size FMCG company runs between 7 and 12 operational systems that each hold a partial view of the business: an ERP for procurement and financials, a Distributor Management System for secondary sales, a WMS for warehouse management, a TMS for logistics, a trade promotion management system, a retail execution tool, and a collection of regional Excel files that bridge the gaps between all of them.
Each of these systems has its own SKU master, its own customer hierarchy, and its own definition of key metrics. Inventory on hand means something different in the WMS, the ERP, and the DMS. A customer is identified by different codes across sales, logistics, and finance. These are not data quality problems - they are data architecture problems, and no amount of data cleansing resolves them without structural integration.
The result is an organisation where every cross-functional question requires a manual data pull and a reconciliation exercise. S&OP meetings spend the first 30 minutes debating whose numbers are right rather than making decisions. That is not a people problem. That is what seven-to-twelve disconnected systems produce.
When your S&OP meetings start with debating the numbers rather than making decisions, the meeting is not the problem - the data architecture underneath it is.
What the Silos Actually Cost
The cost of data silos in FMCG shows up in three places. First, forecast accuracy below 70% - not because the forecasting methodology is wrong, but because the demand signals coming from DMS, POS, and ERP are inconsistent and arrive at different frequencies. The model is forecasting noise as much as demand.
Second, stockouts that coexist with overstock in adjacent warehouses. This is the operational paradox that siloed inventory data creates: the replenishment system sees a stockout at the depot level, orders more, and the new stock arrives next to inventory that was simply invisible to the system. Inventory is in the right place. The data is not.
Third, missed promotional uplifts. When the trade promotion management system is not connected to the demand plan, promotional periods are not factored into the forecast. The sales team beats plan during a promotion. The supply chain runs out of stock during the peak. The supply chain team gets blamed for not planning properly - when the data to plan with was never shared.
Building a Single Source of Truth
A focused data integration programme connecting the top four to five operational systems - ERP, DMS, WMS, and trade promotion data - into a single governed platform typically takes 3–6 months to reach reliable, decision-grade data quality. The foundation is master data: a single SKU master, a single customer hierarchy, and agreed definitions of the five to ten metrics that drive operational decisions.
Once master data is governed and the integration layer is in place, the S&OP meeting changes character. The first 30 minutes stop being about reconciling numbers and start being about deciding what to do with them. That shift - from reconciliation to decision - is the most immediate and measurable benefit of breaking the silos.
The technology to do this is not exotic. Microsoft Fabric, Databricks, or Snowflake connected to the source systems via CDC or API integration, with a governed semantic layer on top. The hard part is not the technology - it is the master data rationalisation and the organisational agreement on definitions that precedes it.
Data silos are a political problem as much as a technical one. Every silo has an owner who built it to serve a legitimate need. The solution isn't to tear them down - it's to build the bridge above them that gives every function a shared view without anyone losing control of their data. That's what a governed data platform actually does.