After spending several days at the Trade Promotion Management show in San Antonio TX one point was driven home very clearly - a majority of vendors do not know if their items are in-stock on a store level at their retail customers. In fact, more than one vendor pointed out that while they have made significant investments into trade promotion software they have not yet invested into store level analysis tools. We had the opportunity to explore this information gap with a few large vendors and identified the following issues:

Item and store level data analysis is a large and complex administrative task.

Many retailers are not providing store level data.

Among the retailers who are providing store level data, the accuracy is seriously questioned.

The good news is nearly all the vendors we spoke to agree the benefits of store level analysis are significant. And most vendors are working toward improving their analysis capabilities. Hopefully, more retailers will provide accurate and timely data to support these vendors.

> return to Blog home