From Dashboards to Direction: The New Standard for CPG Decision Making

Executive Summary

Most CPG teams have never had more dashboards, trackers, and “always-on” reporting.

Yet many organisations still struggle with the moment that actually drives growth: making the decision, committing resources, and executing fast enough to win.

AI is now accelerating the problem. It is not removing data. It is multiplying it.

New tools can generate surveys, analysis, summaries, and recommendations at speed. That sounds helpful. The risk is that it makes insight production cheaper while making decision confidence scarcer.

PwC’s 2026 Global CEO Survey found 56% of CEOs report no significant financial benefit from AI so far.

That statistic matters for every mid-level CPG leader because it signals a shift: the advantage is no longer having more AI, more dashboards, or more “insights.” The advantage is turning evidence into direction the business trusts and acts on.

This article explains why dashboards are losing power as a differentiator, what “direction” really means in CPG decision-making, and how to build an operating rhythm that turns AI-speed output into commercial outcomes.

The shift is not about being more analytical. It is about being more decisive.

If you prefer to listen rather than read, come hear my talk at IIeX in Bangkok in early February, or check out the C3Centricity podcast.

Introduction

Dashboards were meant to reduce uncertainty.

A single view of performance. Clear KPIs. Faster alignment. Fewer opinions.

Many organisations achieved the visibility part. Senior leaders can see sales, share, distribution, promo lift, media performance, and brand health faster than ever. Teams can pull a chart in seconds. Meetings can start with facts.

Yet something frustrating still happens.

The room looks at the numbers. Everyone nods. Everyone agrees the trend is real. Then the conversation slows down, because nobody is fully confident about what to do next. The meeting ends with “let’s look deeper” or “we need more cuts” or “let’s come back next month.”

AI will not fix that.

AI will produce more cuts.

That is why the competitive shift is happening right now, across every CPG function that touches growth. Insight, marketing, innovation, category, and commercial teams are moving from an era where reporting created value to an era where direction creates value.

Direction is not a nicer way of saying “recommendation.” It is what happens when insight becomes decision-ready.

1. Dashboards Create Visibility. Direction Creates Outcomes

Dashboards show you what happened. Direction makes clear what happens next.

Many teams confuse these two things because dashboards feel active. They update. They refresh. They give a sense of motion. Yet visibility is not the same as progress.

Progress requires a decision, and decisions require confidence.

That is why dashboards can become a trap.

A team can spend months building a perfect reporting view, only to discover that decisions are still being made based on senior intuition, political pressure, or short-term fear. The dashboard becomes “proof” after the fact, rather than a tool that shapes the future.

This pattern shows up in three common ways in mid-sized CPG organisations:

Dashboards become a substitute for judgement.
Teams start treating measurement as the work, rather than using measurement to drive the work.
Dashboards become a substitute for ownership. Plenty of KPI reviews happen without anyone being accountable for what changes next.
Dashboards become a substitute for trade-offs. Everything gets tracked, but nothing gets prioritised.

Direction forces prioritisation.
Direction forces trade-offs.
Direction forces ownership.

That is the new standard.

2. AI Is Making Insight Production Cheap

AI is doing something very specific to the economics of insight work. It is collapsing the cost of producing outputs.

Surveys, summaries, analysis drafts, and even strategic storylines can be generated quickly. The “first pass” is no longer the bottleneck. Many teams will be able to produce ten versions of an answer in the time it used to take to create one.

That sounds like productivity. Yet productivity without decision discipline creates noise.

MIT-linked research described this gap bluntly: 95% of organisations are getting zero return from GenAI, with only a small percentage extracting real value.

Those numbers matter because they point to the real failure point: integration, ownership, and decision conversion.

AI is not struggling to produce output. Organisations are struggling to turn output into outcomes.

McKinsey’s 2025 State of AI also describes the same broader reality: adoption is widening, agentic AI is growing, yet many organisations still struggle to move from pilots to scaled impact.

So the real question for CPG leaders is not “how do we generate more insight?”

The decision question is: “how do we choose and act with confidence when everyone can generate analysis instantly?”

That is why direction becomes the value layer.

3. The New Risk for CPG: Fast Answers, Wrong Decisions

AI rarely fails by being obviously wrong. AI fails by being plausible.

A clean story. A confident conclusion. A recommendation that sounds sensible. A chart that looks familiar.

CPG businesses are full of decisions where the wrong call does not fail dramatically on day one. It fails quietly over weeks and months, and the P&L absorbs the cost later.

Examples are familiar to anyone who has carried accountability in a mid-sized organisation:

A promotion looks effective, but it simply pulled volume forward.
A concept tests “great,” yet repeat purchase fails because usage reality was missed.
A price move looks safe in the data, yet the retailer changes placement and share slides.
A pack renovation wins design scores, then creates friction at shelf or at home.

Dashboards can describe those outcomes. They can rarely prevent them.

Direction prevents them because direction forces the business to state the trade-off clearly and commit to the smallest proof needed before spending serious money.

That is why decision confidence is becoming the scarce resource.

PwC’s CEO numbers underline the point: AI spending is widespread, yet most CEOs have not seen significant financial benefit.

Technology is not the missing ingredient. Decision conversion is.

4. What “Direction” Looks Like in a CPG Organisation

Direction is easy to recognise when it is present, because it behaves differently from reporting.

Reporting often sounds like “here is what we found.” Direction sounds like “here is the decision, and here is the evidence that supports the call.”

Direction has five consistent elements:

4.1 A stated decision

A project without a decision is a data exercise. Direction begins by stating the decision plainly, without soft language:

Launch, delay, or cancel.
Increase price, hold, or shift pack sizes.
Invest behind variant A, or consolidate into variant B.
Push distribution in channel X, or protect margin in channel Y.

4.2 A single truth that changes the call

Direction does not mean simplifying for the sake of it. It means choosing what matters most. One truth, supported by evidence, that alters the decision. Everything else becomes context, not content.

4.3 A trade-off the business can accept

CPG decisions always have trade-offs: margin vs volume, speed vs certainty, innovation vs complexity, breadth vs focus. Direction names the trade-off explicitly, so leadership is not surprised later.

4.4 An action within days

Direction creates movement fast. Not a “revisit next quarter.” A next step that can be executed this week.

4.5 Ownership

Direction survives because someone owns what happens next. No owner means no action.
No action means dashboards become theatre. Direction is the opposite of theatre. It is operational.

5. What It Looks Like When AI Actually Drives Direction

AI creates value in CPG when it changes decisions, not when it adds more reporting.

Unilever’s ice cream business provides a very practical example because availability and restocking are where growth becomes real. Unilever reported that using insights from AI-enabled freezers drove sales increases of 8%, 12%, and 30% in different markets by improving stock visibility and replenishment decisions.

That is not a dashboard story. That is direction:

what gets replenished
what gets prioritised
what stays available when demand spikes

HEINEKEN gives another clear illustration. Marketing spend decisions are high stakes, especially in multi-market portfolios. HEINEKEN describes “Allocation AI” as an assistant designed to optimise marketing spend across brands, channels, and markets by calculating thousands of scenarios and turning them into actionable guidance.

Again, the value is not a chart. The value is a better decision.

Both examples share the same pattern:

AI accelerates the analysis.
Humans define the decision.
Humans commit to the trade-off.
Execution creates the outcome.

6. Seven Decision Foundations That Still Matter When Output Becomes Cheap

A recent article from Lenny Murphy at Greenback made a tough point for the insights industry: many historical “moats” are disappearing because AI turns tools and methodology into commodities. The same logic applies inside CPG teams.

Tools will not protect your influence anymore. Decision confidence will.

Seven foundations still create defensible value when AI floods organisations with output.

6.1 Agreed metrics

Some metrics become internal currency.

Leadership trusts them because the organisation agreed to use them. That agreement matters more than how the number is calculated.

Direction becomes stronger when teams stop inventing new measures and instead make existing measures decision-grade, with clear thresholds for action.

6.2 Trust as risk cover

Trust used to mean strong relationships. Trust now means the ability to defend the decision.

This shift is becoming sharper as AI governance rises. PwC’s CEO survey signals that many leaders feel exposed because AI has not yet delivered measurable benefits for most companies.
Leaders will increasingly fund partners and teams who reduce risk, not teams who simply produce output.

6.3 Category context

AI is a generalist.

CPG advantage lives in specifics: category norms, channel behaviour, retailer priorities, cultural cues, and shopper friction.

Direction depends on recognising what the data cannot explain by itself.

6.4 Verified human truth

Synthetic content and synthetic data will keep growing. That makes verified reality more valuable, not less.

Direction becomes safer when it rests on truth you can stand behind, not just model output that looks convincing.

6.5 Governance and compliance

Most organisations treat compliance as a cost. Compliance is becoming a competitive advantage because it protects leaders from risk. Direction that can be defended is direction that gets approved.

6.6 Network value

Isolated dashboards are fragile. Connected ecosystems are stronger. Direction improves when insight connects product performance, consumer behaviour, channel dynamics, and execution reality.

6.7 Physical verification

CPG still lives in the physical world.

AI cannot taste the product, handle the pack, or observe usage friction at home. Physical verification remains a source of truth and a source of advantage.

Direction becomes more credible when it includes proof from real-world behaviour, not only digital interpretation.

7. What This Means for Mid-Level CPG Leaders

Mid-level leaders sit at the point where strategy meets execution. You carry delivery. You also carry outcomes.

This moment matters because AI changes what the business can produce quickly, yet it does not automatically change what the business can decide confidently. That gap creates an opportunity for the leaders who learn to move from reporting to direction.

Three shifts will create that move faster for you.

Shift 1: Brief for the decision, not the output

A weak brief asks for information. A decision brief states the call the business must make, and defines what “enough evidence” looks like. That is how insight stops being activity and becomes value.

Shift 2: Present trade-offs, not findings

Leadership does not need another list of observations. Leadership needs a clear trade-off and a recommendation the organisation can commit to. Direction often requires saying what to stop doing.

Shift 3: Use AI for speed, keep humans for judgement

AI is powerful for first drafts, pattern scanning, and accelerating analysis. Judgement remains human because CPG decisions are full of real constraints: retailer realities, supply limits, competitive responses, and consumer behaviour that does not fit neat logic.

AI can process but humans must decide.

That is not a slogan. It is a career strategy.

8. The Dashboards-to-Direction Audit

Direction is measurable.

Look at your last three pieces of work and assess what changed.

A decision was made earlier than it would have been.
A risky action was avoided.
A launch was refined.
A budget was reallocated.
A retailer conversation shifted.
Execution improved.

Those are outcomes.

Plenty of teams produce excellent insight and still see no change. That is when dashboards become theatre, and AI turns theatre into cheaper theatre.

Conclusion

Dashboards are not going away. AI is not going away.

The competitive shift is still happening.

Output will become abundant.
Decision confidence will become scarce.

CPG teams that treat AI as a reporting upgrade will create more noise.
CPG teams that turn AI-speed output into direction will build growth.

Direction is the new standard for CPG decisions.

Better calls. Clearer trade-offs. Faster execution. Fewer expensive mistakes.

That is what protects the P&L.
That is what protects careers.
That is what keeps teams visible and trusted.

This is also the message I’ll be sharing in early February in Bangkok at IIEX APAC, through the lens of the insights industry: AI changes what can be produced quickly, yet value still comes from human judgement and business decisions.

DM me for access to the presentation recording

Ready to Move From Insight to Direction?

CPG teams rarely lack data. They lack a system that turns evidence into action consistently.

At C3Centricity, we help mid-sized CPG teams move from activity to outcomes through four proven processes:

QC2™
Aligns company, brands, consumers, retailers, and processes around what actually drives profitable growth.

CATSIGHT™
Turns consumer understanding into actions that change behaviour, not just presentations.

LADDERS™
Builds leadership visibility and influence so mid-level managers can drive decisions upward, not just execute downward.

PAINT™
Clarifies direction when a role, career, or organisation has lost momentum.