If (manufacturers who utilize Direct Store Delivery) improved their inventory and order management abilities, an additional 14 minutes/store can be saved and used for merchandising activities.
 
By allowing your field staff to have some data visibility, they become much more powerful in pricing, merchandising, products in the pipeline, promotions, etc… In fact, an additional 4% revenue growth due to fewer opportunities missed, 5–6 times more new product sales and better store compliance with pricing, plan–o–grams and promotions. Imagine how sharing data between supply chain partners would benefit!
 
Your field rep morale and enhanced customer satisfaction as a result of the automation of tasks and enhanced field instructions and best practices.¹

Manufacturers now understand that the store itself is the new media. There has been an explosion of new item introductions, out of stocks (OOSs), missing items and confounding item assortments that have frustrated consumers and their ability to buy what they desire. The out of stocks are no longer solely high velocity items, but includes also “voids” or items that should be in the store but are not. Voids and OOSs in total are running 10–20% of all items — Focus on the must have stores.²

The biggest challenge by far is effective retail execution, cited by 53% of (manufacturer) respondents. This is one area that will require true collaboration between retail and supplier trading partners, particularly to avoid the finger–pointing that often occurs when something goes wrong.³

Challenges existing for manufacturers:
31% — Named lack of business processes as a challenge;
31% — Named lack of timely visibility into product movement to the shelf;
28% — Cited high supply costs;
25% — Said supply chain inability to execute at a more granular level;
25% — Named culture change challenges;
22% — Cited organizational changes.³
 
Do you outsource your (manufacturer) category analytics needs?
43% — No, entirely internal, done by Category Teams;
27% — No, entirely internal, done by Business Intelligence / Strategy Team;
14% — Other;
11% — Yes, to analytics service providers;
5% — Yes, to vendors of syndicated data source.³
 
At what stage are you (manufacturers) in the adoption of visibility and exception management tools?
24% — Don’t know/Can’t answer;
20% — Fully Deployed;
20% — No Plans;
16% — Evaluating;
12% — Piloting;
7% — Initial Rollout;
2% — Upgrading.⁴

…the challenge on the supplier side is gathering, cleansing and normalizing the huge volume of POS data and then turning that data into insights that can be acted upon.³
 
From a Category Management standpoint, what role do you play with the majority of your retail customers?
39% — Regularly provide insights to support own brands;
31% — Category Captain proving category level insights;
15% — Occasionally provide insights to support own brands.
7% — Rarely provide insights to support own brands.
8% — Other.³
 
When asked what the most important factor to a successful working relationship was,
36% — Cited collaborative business planning. Suppliers want to engage with retailers up front to initiate and execute on strategies…³
 
To what degree do the following challenge your company’s (manufacturers) ability to collaborate with its trading partners?
79% — Limited external resources and support form our trading partners;
69% — Limited internal resources and support;
66% — Access to timely, relevant data from out trading partners;
60% — Conflicting and/or misaligned goals between manufacturers and retailers;
55% — Lack of technologies and tools that supports collaboration efforts.⁴

Best in class manufacturers achieve:
76% — Gained improvement in frequency of out of stocks within last 2 years;
79% — Average forecast accuracy at product family level;
43% — Ability to reduce the time from demand sensing to taking action.⁵
 
At what stage are you (manufacturers) in the adoption of visibility and exception management tool
24% — Don’t know/Can’t answer;
20% — Fully Deployed;
20% — No Plans;
16% — Evaluating;
12% — Piloting;
7% — Initial Rollout;
2% — Upgrading.⁴