Blog

When you spend as much time as we do involved in ‘missionary’ conversations educating senior retail and consumer goods executives, it is a breath of fresh air when a research report is published which directly supports your business case.  That is why we were celebrating in November 2005 when the “2005 Shared Strategy Study: The State… Read more »

I have been reading Sun Tzu over the holiday weekend.  Very interesting reading.  It’s the type of reading where you cover a few lines and then take an hour to reflect on what it means to your business. One passage stuck me:“Therefore, determine the enemy’s plans and you will know which strategy will be successful… Read more »

We were recently referred to check out a great new association for category management professionals.  We spent some time on their web site and joined the organization.  I must say, so far we’ve been impressed. Check out CPG Cat Net.  http://www.cpgcatnet.org/ Call to action: what other category management resources do you find beneficial?

In the June issue of Consumer Goods Technology, there is a terrific success story on how data sharing and collaboration between a retailer and vendor should work.  This is a must read for any retail or vendor operations, sales, or supply chain professional. Here is a clip from the article: Smart & Final offers the same… Read more »

We have been contacted by many vendors to major retailers in the past two weeks, looking for a solution to EDI 852 reporting.  It’s not surprising since many major retailers send the EDI data out and simply hope vendors are able to use the data in some beneficial manor.  The fact is, most vendors are… Read more »

Our President and CEO will be a featured speaker at the upcoming Trade Promotion Association event in Chicago.  If your organization is concerned about trade promotion, this is a must attend event. The Trade Promotion Management Association (TPMA), is a non-profit trade association for professionals and organizations involved with trade promotion. TPMA provides members with… Read more »

Our Accelerated Analytics product was recently highlighted in the retail blog ShiSh List.  We recommend taking a look at their posting as well as looking around the blog.  Lots of good content on retail collaboration. Accelerated Analytics was designed and built using Microsoft SQL 2005 and ProClarity (for the non-geek that means latest great technology) for business users to… Read more »

A surprisingly large number of organizations are still using spreadsheets as the backbone of core business processes like POS data analysis, category management, and vendor collaboration.  There are many reasons for this, and even for a business intelligence professional like myself, I cannot simply dismiss their use altogether.  Although, it would be good for business… Read more »

Stock outs are a serious problem.  Research has shown stock outs average 8%, but can be as high as 40% on promoted items.  So, retailers and vendors are losing up to 40% of their potential sales on some items.  The financial impact is often exasperated by an overly large order to compensate for the back-order… Read more »

Show of hands, how many of you know how to calculate price elasticity?  Well, if you are like me, you know the general concept but the math is a bit rusty.  So here is a quick and dirty refresher. Price elasticity is a measure of how demand for a product is influenced by price changes.  This… Read more »