The Analyst Viewpoint
Consumer goods manufacturers that want to assess a low-cost/low-risk SaaS-based approach - to address the challenges of retail data sharing to improve data visibility and increase the success of promotions, new product introductions and day-to-day shelf availability - should evaluate RSi.
-Peter Bambridge, Gartner Group
Sales and Marketing Solutions
Store Operations and Field Sales
Most CPG companies maintain some form of retail store presence, whether owned or outsourced to a broker, to visit stores at frequencies varying from daily to less than once a month. Each visit typically lasts well below an hour: how can you ensure that the limited number of tasks your staff can execute during this limited period of time is the one that will create the most value for your company?
Retail Solutions brings a new layer of cross-functional optimization to store operations and field sales. Blending the proprietary intelligence we have developed across processes from out-of-stocks to promotions and from NPI to replenishment with an open integration framework to mobile devices and task scheduling systems, Retail Solutions maximizes both the efficiency and the effectiveness of your store operations and field sales team.
Retail Solutions customers leverage downstream data to design optimal to-do-list for every store visit, in near-real time based on yesterday's data. Some of Retail Solutions use cases for store operations and field sales include:
- Merchandiser and sales force to-do-list optimization
- Out-of-stock resolution
- Execution compliance (promotions, NPIs)
- Pricing and planogram compliance
- Sales-driven replenishment
- Merchandiser and sales force effectiveness management
Merchandisers operating off Retail Solutions to-do-lists have a higher effectiveness in the store, resulting in higher sales, lower out-of-stock levels and higher promotion and product launch execution compliance.
- Quantify the expected value created by each merchandiser action to build fact-based prioritization model across the entire store rather than rely on a fixed schedule covering each department and/or focus area (promotions, product launches, availability, replenishment...)
- Transform your reps into sales people by giving them the facts they need to start a real dialog with retail store associates: influence store and department manager behavior by providing regular store scorecards comparing performance across metrics against other in-market stores
- Change the store calling plan in real time based on highest opportunity stores, not based on static planning
- Automatically measure field sales effectiveness based on sales, inventory, unsaleables, out-of-stock rates and fixes, new item cut-ins, etc... to measure the real ROI of your operations
Retail Solutions dramatically simplifies the generation of a custom, relevant to-do-list for each store visit.
- Refreshes in near-real time to ensure actions are taken immediately on the most recent data - not on last week's data
- Customizable model for hierarchization of alerts - incorporating both monetary value of each alert and strategic priorities (e.g. a particular promotion or new item cut-in)
- Available in any format: from emails to printed reports to mobile device integration
- Comprehensive alert feedback mechanism to build self-learning system
- Result-tracking features to ensure that alerts are being dealt with on and that value is captured