Measurement, Part of the Execution Solution!
Plan, Do, Measure….That is the mantra of the In Store Implementation Share-group, and has been in one, shape or form the tactical basis of every effective management technique for many years.
Easy to say…hard to do. Not so much the planning. We have scores of effective shelf, category, shopper insight, pricing and promotion planning tools which are made more sophisticated each year. Not even so much the doing, as we have built any number of both organizational structures (3rd party merchandisers, distributors, wall-to-wall resources, etc.) in both our retail and our manufacturer organizations. We have also built more effective task management systems (Reflexis, Red Prairie, others) that have the ability to prioritize and manage the crushing amounts of instructions headquarters wants to have implemented in their shelf, pricing, promotion and “fixit” efforts at store level.
The measurement….not so easy. Oh, we have our syndicated data that gives us a smattering of causal (display, ad and special price information) generally from a sample of stores. Not enough detail, nor timely enough, nor complete enough to give an accurate, actionable picture of shelf/store conditions. Certainly enough wiggle room to allow the trading partners to disagree about the readings provided….and therefore about the conclusions about the effectiveness of the planning or the doing.
POS data was also viewed as a potential measuring stick, particularly as it moved from weekly to daily and had marvelous models applied to it to determine out of stocks and the like. Over time we have come to understand that while POS is a measure of results….with no view of the store conditions that in the main caused the results we are in no better position to change our plans or our execution if we do not know what the prior plans nor execution actually executed!
Other tools were supposed to measure (self reporting systems tied out to task management), or eliminate the need for measurement (Shelf Strip Systems). These of course are fraught with issues that either cause some element of trust barriers to acceptance (self reporting?) or are systematically insupportable (Shelf Strip Systems start with data from the Product Information Masterfile… the accuracy issues have been discussed in this blog, GXS, Agentrics, GS1 and many other areas at length.)
There are a couple of emerging technologies that have the potential of effective measurement in an irrefutable, collaborative and efficient manner. RFID was thought to be the front runner in this arena, but technical, business practise and cost hurdles continue to plague this dream, although VCs still invest millions into companies such as Altierre and Goliath. The new group of solutions appear more pragmatic. One of these is ShelfSnap , another is Store Eyes and the third is ShelfMeter by Ferveo Technologies. (more…)
