Kimberly-Clark Tackles Demand Signal Management
Kimberly-Clark, the personal product company with famous brands such as Kleenex, Scott, Huggies, Pull-Ups, Kotex and Depend, prides itself on being one of the best suppliers in the industry. With a market position of No. 1 or No. 2 in more than 80 countries, being the lead supplier in a number of categories at its customers is almost a standard position which creates both tremendous opportunities and great challenges.
When Food Lion, the largest retailer within the Delhaize USA umbrella, started sharing point-of-sale data in December 2006, Kimberly-Clark jumped on the opportunity. The Food Lion initiative, dubbed Vendor Pulse, enabled suppliers to receive sales, inventory level, shrink and reclaim information for each product, every day, in each store, providing an unmatched ability to perform detailed analyses on what was working and what was not.
However, the initial enthusiasm quickly turned into a major headache. Kimberly-Clark sells more than 250 products at 1,300 Food Lion stores, which meant that every day it had to handle well over 300,000 data points; the sales and stock of each product in every store, every day.
In July 2008, Kimberly-Clark turned to Retail Solutions Demand Signal Management (DSM) to help solve its issues. Retail Solutions DSM is a web-based set of management reports enabling the user to intuitively start with its retail performance scorecard and drill down from there to mine opportunities from the data at its lowest level of granularity.
"Going with Retail Solutions was the logical decision," explains Hall, referring to the decision made by Food Lion in June 2008 to select Retail Solutions to power its Vendor Pulse program. "Food Lion saw the value in this solution, as did we."
Click here to read this case study in its entirety.
When Food Lion, the largest retailer within the Delhaize USA umbrella, started sharing point-of-sale data in December 2006, Kimberly-Clark jumped on the opportunity. The Food Lion initiative, dubbed Vendor Pulse, enabled suppliers to receive sales, inventory level, shrink and reclaim information for each product, every day, in each store, providing an unmatched ability to perform detailed analyses on what was working and what was not.
However, the initial enthusiasm quickly turned into a major headache. Kimberly-Clark sells more than 250 products at 1,300 Food Lion stores, which meant that every day it had to handle well over 300,000 data points; the sales and stock of each product in every store, every day.
In July 2008, Kimberly-Clark turned to Retail Solutions Demand Signal Management (DSM) to help solve its issues. Retail Solutions DSM is a web-based set of management reports enabling the user to intuitively start with its retail performance scorecard and drill down from there to mine opportunities from the data at its lowest level of granularity.
"Going with Retail Solutions was the logical decision," explains Hall, referring to the decision made by Food Lion in June 2008 to select Retail Solutions to power its Vendor Pulse program. "Food Lion saw the value in this solution, as did we."
Click here to read this case study in its entirety.