Speed to Action
In today's competitive consumer goods marketplace, speed to action based on demand-data insights equals increased value for all parties - the suppliers, retailers and consumers.
But, the responsibility usually rests on the manufacturer to collect, cleanse, audit, harmonize, analyze, and ultimately, act on point-of-sale (POS) data to make faster and more accurate decisions.
About three years ago, Del Monte Foods, one of the country's largest producers, distributors and marketers of premium branded food and pet products such as the StarKist, Meow Mix and Milk-Bone brands, recognized that value could be realized from better leveraging retailer data.
Since then, Del Monte Foods deployed a technology platform from Vision Chain, a market provider of demand signal repository (DSR) software. The goal: to enhance its demand-driven supply chain management decisions across leading retailers.
CGT spoke with Del Monte Foods' Dom Clemente, director of demand planning, and Andy Wojewodka, director, IT business consulting, to discern how the company is currently leveraging retailer data from both a sales and supply chain perspective to gain competitive advantage.
Choosing a Partner
According to Clemente and Wojewodka, Del Monte Foods realized that "retailers were becoming more 'open' with sharing data, and we started moving forward in shaping a strategy for Del Monte."
First came the decision to implement an enterprise solution, one that could scale to support such a multi-retailer DSR. Next came the vendor selection process.
Del Monte Foods chose Vision Chain for three reasons:
But, the responsibility usually rests on the manufacturer to collect, cleanse, audit, harmonize, analyze, and ultimately, act on point-of-sale (POS) data to make faster and more accurate decisions.
About three years ago, Del Monte Foods, one of the country's largest producers, distributors and marketers of premium branded food and pet products such as the StarKist, Meow Mix and Milk-Bone brands, recognized that value could be realized from better leveraging retailer data.
Since then, Del Monte Foods deployed a technology platform from Vision Chain, a market provider of demand signal repository (DSR) software. The goal: to enhance its demand-driven supply chain management decisions across leading retailers.
CGT spoke with Del Monte Foods' Dom Clemente, director of demand planning, and Andy Wojewodka, director, IT business consulting, to discern how the company is currently leveraging retailer data from both a sales and supply chain perspective to gain competitive advantage.
Choosing a Partner
According to Clemente and Wojewodka, Del Monte Foods realized that "retailers were becoming more 'open' with sharing data, and we started moving forward in shaping a strategy for Del Monte."
First came the decision to implement an enterprise solution, one that could scale to support such a multi-retailer DSR. Next came the vendor selection process.
Del Monte Foods chose Vision Chain for three reasons:
- Its seven-year track record with one of Del Monte's sales teams on a key account
- The desired centralized architecture at a lower total cost of ownership
- Demonstration of a passion and understanding of the consumer goods space.
In addition, Clemente and Wojewodka cite the company's "adapter" architecture - or its ability to integrate with Del Monte Foods' existing supply chain management systems and enterprise data warehouse - as a key strength.
Currently, Del Monte Foods is using the platform to cleanse and analyze multi-retailer POS data. Vision Chain feeds Del Monte Foods' supply chain management execution tools with clean, real-time, shelf-level customer data. An "output adapter" then flows a subset of information into the company's enterprise data warehouse, where retailer and Del Monte Foods data is blended.
"A standard 'output adapter' flows more granular information into
our deployment planning tools," explains Clemente.
Expected Value
Across all of Del Monte Foods' retail customers where the solution is currently implemented, teams have been able to improve results in both the areas of sales and supply chain. These results include:
- Improved customer service levels, inventory turns and transportation costs, relative to deployment of finished goods to the "correct" distribution centers
- Improved results from promotional activities by reducing out of stocks at specific retail stores
- Improved retail relationships, even participating in consultative selling regarding new item introduction/penetration at the store level.
- Improved assortment decisions, access to better retail store cluster analysis and more frequent store-specific category management
- Effective identification of unsaleable issues in the retail supply chain
Real Results
In particular, at one retailer where the solution is currently implemented, Del Monte Foods executives realized key sales problems around its current mixed promotional pallets across all stores.
For the six different products on the mixed promotional pallet, there was not one store among thousands that was able to sell even one of all six items.
In fact, only 20 percent of the stores could even handle three of the six promotional items.
The Del Monte Foods team realized that there must have been a shelf space allocation problem and/or that the velocity was too high. Thus, they were able to realize and pinpoint loss in the area of unsaleables.
Moving forward, Del Monte Foods has "active projects in place to leverage retailer data into transportation optimization and master production scheduling processes in 2008," reports Clemente.