The primary purpose of a store analysis is to identify the stores which are making the largest contribution to total sales. When the highest contributing stores are identified, an analyst can study the characteristics of those stores, including SKU assortment, demographics, promotions, min/max on hand, and make recommendations on how other stores can be improved to enhance performance. An important objective of a store analysis is to grade stores by performance into major categories, to save time and focus out of stock and forecasting on the highest contributing stores in future analysis. The data provided in an EDI 852 document provides all the necessary information to conduct a store sales analysis.

Buyers often have a store list with categories defined A,B,C,D based on sales performance. However, the buyer’s categories are typically assigned based on the total sales for a given store or total sales for a product category. This may result in a different performance ranking than the analysis on your specific SKU’s. Because plan-o-gram decisions are made based on the retailer’s store categories, you may find that an A store for your items is considered a B or C store based on total sales. Request a list of store categories from your buyer and compare to the categories from your analysis. If there are variances, we recommend you meet with your buyer and discuss adjustments to the plan-o-gram based on store performance for your SKU’s.

Why should you conduct a store sales analysis using your EDI 852 data?
· Identify variances between the retailers general store grade and the actual store grade for your SKU’s.
· Understanding a store’s performance relative to its peers allows you to focus your attention where it is most needed.
· Identify the best allocation of promotional dollars
· Work with the buyer to put the right plan-o-gram in each store
· Retail replenishment decisions are usually made based on their store grade, if it’s not correct for your SKU’s, there is a problem you can correct
· Compare store grades across retail partners in the same geographies so you can identify new expansion opportunities.

Additional information and detailed instructions are available at https://www.acceleratedanalytics.com/whitepapers/