Retail FMCG —- Hot Topics

Front end sales and profitability

Not just cost cutting – decide what level of CS you want to offer – One company implemented a labour scheduling system to control labour costs but at lunchtime on a Friday you had to form a snake like queue in the pub nearest HO to get served much to everyone’s dissatisfaction. Some companies are not measuring labour percentages these days but average pull time on the beer fonts at key trading times to ensure they are servicing enough customers _ Anabol Consultants have the expertise to steer you through this difficult area successfully.

CPFR – (Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment)

Very much information driven, some algorithms can become very complex includes special events, weather etc, sometimes that is necessary And sometimes it overcomplicates – horses for courses. Anabol can help.

Multi million pound IT projects still do not give the people at the coal face the information they want – management information not data. Exception Based Reporting is really important in many instances e.g. supply chain , stock management, category sales ranking – need the culture to be to accept running business by exception information and not worry about the norm. Anabol Consultants can implement and train your staff in the most effective IT solutions for your company.

Internal confusion between sales/marketing/finance leads to CEOs being too confused with conflicting reports/demands to make decisions. This needs clear approach to data management so that data is mastered effectively to ideally give one view of the truth on e.g. product codes, sales so everyone in the organisation understands what is being reported. And feed this information into proper business process design. Anabol consultants have the systems to help you achieve this.

POS – Increase basket size, measure peripheral sales, reluctance to measure – advertising screens @ POS – A big element based on sophisticated management information systems to tie all of the information together. Marketing technology companies will promise that advertising drives sales all of the time, this has to be able to tie what is being advertised with products sold out of POS systems at product level and time of day to measure if there is indeed a payback – often the data comes from disparate systems. Anabol can sort this out for you.

Short Term vs Long Term solutions – 24 month forecasting and bonuses?

Different types of measurement in play – the annual bonus driven by this year only results that may work against long term objectives. Balanced Scorecard with its lead and lag indicators used to be the measurement of the success of the strategic vision but this has often been superseded by short – termism – see the banks!. Anabol can help you balance these two desirables.