THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

Elevate the Customer Experience
with End-to-End Supply Chain Collaboration 

There’s No Upside to Out-of-Stocks

Not only are customers frustrated when the product they seek is not available, but a recent study by Oliver Wyman reports that poor product availability can lead to a 5% reduction in sales.

Poor On-Shelf Availability Leads to:

Reduced sales

Negative customer experiences

Diminished loyalty

Lost customers


This ages-old conundrum of reducing out-of-stocks to improve the customer experience is now being addressed with advances in technology that improve supply chain visibility for retailers and CPG supplier partners.

Balancing the Big Three of Collaboration 

Today, retailers and suppliers can optimize supply chain performance through unprecedented levels of collaboration powered by big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning. By tapping into technology-powered collaboration, including the transparent integration of disparate inventory and movement data, retailers and their supplier partners can create a repeatable framework that can be used to maximize sales and manage inventory throughout critical seasons and all year long.

Sync Expected Versus Actual Sales Performance for Optimal Inventory

IRI’s retail collaboration platforms integrate data from forecasts, purchase orders, inventory, and store sales to ensure that retailers and manufacturers see the same information at the same time. This north-star vision allows partners to collaboratively discuss optimal forecasts and purchase order cadences.

Deep supply chain insights ensure optimal inventory flow and maximize on-shelf availability.

 

Optimize inventory and forecasting to meet demand with minimal excess inventory

Create better visibility through daily data updates and alerts

Foster retailer-supplier collaboration



The retailer plays a critical role in ensuring the efficiency and accuracy of the supply chain. Ensuring orders are placed on time and reflect forecasted demand is an ongoing task and is key to creating consistently good customer experiences. When variances are noted, adjustments must be made quickly. Hand-in-hand with their supplier partners, retailers must have a full understanding of sales impact, inventory planning, and store shipment from distribution centers.


In all stores, the goal is to ensure that initial orders come in on time and in full. Variations to the expected item quantity may result from:

Unexpected seasonal variations, including weather or economic factors, within or across regions

Issues at the distribution center

Backlog at the supplier


Inventory efforts must be very focused to successfully right-size inventory to meet demand variations across the region. Ongoing monitoring allows retailers to quickly identify which stores have been shorted product. Ensuring that the supplier-retailer-distribution center trifecta is in sync makes it easier to identify sources of weakness.

Ongoing monitoring also enables rapid service-level issue identification and remediation.

Purchase order fill-rate issue

Transportation performance

Inaccurate forecasts

Unexpected demand

The Shelf is the Moment Of Truth


To the customer, the only thing that matters is whether the product is on the shelf when he/ she comes in to make a purchase. Detailed in IRI’s recent paper, On-Shelf Availability: Fueling Profitability, Customer Loyalty and Topline Sales Growth, on-shelf availability – and thus, the customer’s shopping experience – can be negatively impacted by several issues, including when a product:
 


Is blocked by another item


Has been misplaced


Has an incorrect or missing price tag


Has an incorrect inventory count (phantom inventory)

 

The same AI and machine learning that detects sales patterns and identifies potential on-shelf availability issues can also identify items that have obsolete inventory counts, such as too much Halloween candy on November 1, caused by a forecast that was too high, inventory that was never brought out from the back room, or inventory that was available in the store but not where it should have been/where the customer expected it to be, which can result in out-of-stock or overstock situations. Flagging these scenarios quickly is the key to recapturing sales that might otherwise be lost and allows retailers to protect the shopper experience.
 

 

By integrating supply chain data on a single collaboration platform, retailers and their supplier partners create a streamlined and singular view of the operation. This platform sets the stage for shared goals and shared perspectives, and ultimately shared growth.
 

 

Read this case study to find out how a supplier and retailer worked together to identify and fix distribution voids for a 50% increase in sales in just 12 weeks. 

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