Nick Calver, Marketing Director
Do you and your team spend countless hours downloading reports from retail portals? Imagine what you could do if that time was better spent on impactful activities…
Collecting, storing, and managing retail customer data can be painful, frustrating, and unproductive. Many users feel like they are on a hamster wheel. Perhaps you might be able to relate to some of these experiences shared by our customers:
- Kelly Holman, National Account Executive at Valeo Foods Group, shares, “My Mondays would start with me turning on my laptop at 6am, just to begin downloading huge spreadsheets from various retailer portals… It would take up the entire day, every single week.“
- Ben Liddle, Operations Manager at Mockingbird Raw Press, describes the process as “chaotic,” highlighting the team’s limited bandwidth for monitoring shelf availability, service levels and other key metrics.
- Scott Morton, Head of Customer Collaboration at Alpro, points out that “there is a big difference between having the information you need and the resource required to gather it”, emphasising the huge task of doing so across every customer.
The net result is that most organisations pull data only once a week, monthly, or sporadically. Yet, the real value of this data lies in having ready access to daily insights; data must be current, as the speed at which organisations can access demand intelligence plays a critical role in their overall success.
Challenges to overcome in collecting and managing data
The reality of collecting, processing and organising retail customer data is challenging. While many grocery supplier data systems contain fantastic data they also present obstacles making it a costly and error-prone process:
- Firstly, daily reporting demands time, effort, and dedication. To maintain a complete record of transient data, such as daily stock positions (crucial for stock cover calculations), it is essential to gather this data every day. This means that someone must generate these reports during weekends, holidays, and beyond.
- Secondly, system outages further complicate the task of data collection. Whether it’s a predictable Monday slowdown when a retail customer system is overwhelmed by supplier access, or an unpredictable system outage occurring several times a week, the challenge lies in finding time to access the system when it is operational.
- Lastly, data changes lead to inaccuracies. Grocers often report adjustments to sales and stock positions two, three, or even four days after their initial reports. These adjustments, significant at the day/store/item level, can cause discrepancies between the values in weekly and daily reports.
Improve productivity with automated data analytics
We’ve seen how traditional data collection can be a headache. Thankfully, demand intelligence platforms offer a sophisticated and efficient solution for automating data collection, ensuring data accuracy and completeness, and integrating seamlessly with popular reporting and analysis tools.
Key features
- Visualisation tools for quick analysis (and reporting): Demand intelligence platforms give you tools to quickly understand what your data is telling you with advanced, visually rich reporting and analysis tools. This makes gleaning insights into trading performance quick and efficient.
- Automates data collection: No more manual downloads. Automated systems pull data daily from various sources. This includes capturing several days of recent history to ensure that all data changes are accurately recorded. It’s reliable, even when systems are down or it’s the weekend.
- Centralises data: One place for all your data. The Demand Signal Repository (DSR) takes data from different formats and brings it together. Easy to find, easy to use. This allows for seamless access, querying, reporting, and analysis of any customer data set, regardless of the source.
- Seamless integration: Works with your existing tools. Whether it’s Excel, PowerBI, or ERP systems like SAP, the data fits right into your workflow.
Seamlessly incorporate daily trading data into your workflows
Building on these key features, automation simplifies the incorporation of daily trading data into your workflows. This can yield significant benefits, from better demand planning to more effective field sales interventions. Here are some primary use cases:
- Enhanced Monday morning reporting: Having your performance reports ready first thing on a Monday morning is vital to starting the week off right. Automated reporting capabilities remove the hassle of gathering the previous week’s sales, service, and metric data from multiple portals, helping you prepare your reports in time.
- Improved demand planning: Timely access to daily trading data allows customer operations and demand planners to respond quickly when events deviate from the planned trajectory. Even a few extra hours in the morning can significantly influence the day’s sales performance, provided that the response is fast enough.
- Optimising availability: Supply chain managers can optimise availability by accessing data first thing in the morning, enabling them to shape what happens the following day. They can evaluate the previous day’s events and prioritise their tasks to ensure optimal distribution of available goods across depots and the store network.
- Effective field sales interventions: For field sales teams, timely access to data is invaluable. Morning snapshots of store performance and actionable insights allow them to plan their daily activities effectively. By promptly identifying underperforming stores or addressing stock issues, they can ensure optimal sales performance and customer satisfaction.
- And many other use cases, from promotional planning to waste to forecasting and on…
Want to see SKUtrak in action? Contact us today for a demonstration on how SKUtrak can save you endless hours collecting and managing data.