Working Back from the Point of Sale

Solving Three Key Challenges to Profitable Category Management

Managing product categories for optimal performance in foodservice presents three key challenges that category partners need to solve: how to manage data reporting and analysis, conduct effective selling logistics, and close the sale. This post examines these three problems and identifies practicable solutions for manufacturers in collaboration with their distribution partners.

Data Reporting, Management and Analysis

Manufacturers often do not have regular, dependable access to sales data. Transaction information typically resides downstream, so the manufacturer must negotiate with its distribution partners to establish a mechanism for information sharing. Assuming such agreement is reached, the process may give rise to a variety of data problems. Data integrity issues are prominent among these. It is unlikely that the manufacturer will receive specially prepared sales reports – information more probably will come in the form of raw data untreated for accuracy, correctness or clarity. Readers of these reports will find it hard to obtain insights in them from which to take action on a timely basis. Read the rest of this entry »

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Analytics for Intelligent Category Management

Collaboration between distributors and manufacturers is the cornerstone of category management in foodservice. For a given product category a manufacturer is selected to be category captain, with responsibility for improving category performance. This post addresses some key data and analytical issues with which manufacturers should expect to deal as category captains.

So you have been asked by your most important foodservice distribution partner to be a category captain. What happens next? As captain you are tasked with managing the assigned category for optimal performance. That entails the following:

•    Analyze all products across the category (not just your own brands)
•    Augment the data provided by the distribution partner with your own internally generated insights
•    Provide structured, actionable recommendations based on intelligence obtained from the data

These recommendations relate to product assortment, pricing policies, promotional activities and other important demand levers for driving profitability. At the same time you need to educate your distribution partners, both at corporate headquarters and in the field, about the product characteristics that can help increase demand. This requires an intelligent approach to data analytics.

What insights about products can help drive category sales?

What might a good analytics model for category management look like? Let’s consider the key tasks we identified in the previous paragraph. Read the rest of this entry »

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Before You Build, Ask the Right Questions

An Approach for Robust Data Management

Building a robust data management environment is in many ways like building a house. There are three components to building a good house. First of all, there are some fundamental questions you need to ask before doing anything. Why are you building the house in the first place? What are the important goals and benefits you want to enjoy? What other things are you willing to trade off to realize those benefits? Asking and answering those questions will help with the second component: building a model, or architectural blueprint. There are many different ways to build a house (or a data management system). Not all of them will be right for the needs you have in mind. There are efficiencies to designing and building in certain ways – and, as always, there are trade-offs with any given choice. Finally, once you have established a workable model, it’s time to build out the infrastructure. That starts with the plumbing. Nothing else in the house is going to work well without good plumbing which, seamlessly and unobserved, harnesses the flow of water (or data, in our analogy) to efficient uses as and when needed. Then comes the foundation – the platform to support the house according to your model. Think of the plumbing and the foundation as the transmission pipes, the controls to regulate the flow of information, the storage repositories and the other critical supports for your data management platform.

robust systems need good blueprints

Asking the Questions that Matter for You

It’s hard to imagine that someone would build a home without first asking and answering some basic questions about what purpose the home is meant to serve. But all too often enterprise managers think of their data intelligence needs in terms of generic, one-size-fits-all products and solutions. They may be driven by the perceived urgency of getting immediate results, so they do not put the extra time into thinking through all the details that have to be in place in order for a solution to best meet their targeted needs. They build up organizational IT resources but fail to adequately integrate these resources into business decision-making processes so that business goals and technological capabilities are aligned. By not asking the right questions up front, managers increase the likelihood that their IT investment will fail to achieve the specified goals. Read the rest of this entry »

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