01/09/2024
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas (well it should be for brands!)
What % of your annual sales would you expect in November & December? 50%? More?
And what do you expect your on-shelf availability to be? For many brands, especially in Grocery, it will probably be 80% or lower. (i.e. you'll sell 20% less than you should!)
So what goes wrong?
- Retailers don't have time to review all forecasts accurately
- Suppliers have not prepared enough stock
- Suppliers and distributors aren't quick enough to response to orders (it's busy!)
- Store staff can't replenish the shelves quickly enough
- Loads of promos across different brands skewing demand
Now more importantly, what can be done about it? (hint, it's in the data)
1) Have access to granular retailer data set up (we're focussed on grocery here)
2) Data should include sales, store inventory and DC inventory, plus product movement data
3) Plan ahead! You should be having conversations in September and October about the volumes you'll need to deliver in November and December
4) Allocate your future stock by channel / retailer so you have enough for everyone
5) Regular reviews as sales ramp up, with exception reports on skus / store / DC's which are either short... or will soon be short
6) Close the gaps! Get on the phone to your distributor or retailer, share the data, taken quick action.
Sounds complicated?
It can be, but with .io partnership with ® , we can provide ALL of the above, across 6 of the largest UK grocery retailers (and we can get you started for Free)
Each day, we access your data on your behalf, clean it up, load into system and automatically populate around 20 dashboards and reports which support the above - and much more.
With some of the retailers, we can access up to 2 years of historic data, so we can see what you achieved (and what you could have achieved) last Christmas.
Would increasing sales by 20% make it a better Christmas for you?
Just comment 'Free Demo' below and we can set up a call to discuss.
