Wal-Mart
vendors have access to a wealth
of sales and inventory data
through Wal-Mart's Retail
Link portal. The challenge
for many vendors is that Retail
Link can provide access to
extremely detailed data which
increases the quantity and
difficulty of analyzing the
data and making fast business
decisions. Without the right
tools the process can be very
time consuming and difficult.
If you are
a Wal-Mart vendor invest in
a set of tools that will allow
you to store and quickly analyze
Retail Link data. The tool
should allow storage of multiple
years of store and item level
detail and it should provide
filtering and sorting to narrow
the focus of your decision
making. The focus your fist
analysis efforts should be
sales velocity and inventory
in-stock. The tool should
automatically filter the top
50 and bottom 50 stores by
unit sales volume. This allows
the vendor to quickly identify
which stores are driving the
most volume, as well as the
stores that need immediate
attention. Next it is critical
to identify on a daily or
weekly basis the stores that
are out of stock. Fixing the
inventory out of stock in
these stores will directly
increase your sales.
Become proactive
in dealing with out of stock
at a store level by reviewing
the unit sales volume for
all of your out of stock stores
for the 8 periods prior to
the out of stock. Determine
an average period units sold
and then identify for each
store how many periods it
takes to get new inventory
to the store. So for example,
if a store is averaging 6
units per week and it takes
14 days to get inventory to
the store then the minimum
inventory level that store
should maintain at all times
is 12 units. This provides
two weeks of inventory on-hand
and will allow for proactive
replenishment to avoid stock-out
exposure. As a Wal-Mart vendor
you may be selling into over
3,500 Wal-Mart stores but
if you complete this analysis
for the top 70 or 80% of your
stores based on units sold
velocity, you will have gone
a long way toward reducing
out of stock situations and
increasing sales.
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