What can you expect in 2020 ?
Thinking about the store and the consumer, Many of our partners have ask us to help them in several major areas:
Store level machine learning – It would appear that organizations are having trouble finding and keeping analysts in analyst positions. With that said, Supplemental has been working with machine learning algorithms for over a year and half in other areas, so it made perfect sense to provide teams with the same machine learning technologies. If your organization is having trouble keeping intellectual capital in analyst positions, we can discuss these tools and approaches and how they can be leveraged and you will NEVER lose the intellectual capital again.
Forecast exceptions – We found that most organizations don’t have any knowledge of the drivers of retail forecasting from DC to store. With that said, we will begin to give people a ‘short list’ of the DC Item combinations they should be looking at for inventory consideration.
Profit Planner – Many have requested we integrate the Profit Planner information into our model. Often, there are several things people wish to look at with any type of outside replenishment system plans. This insight into Profit Planner will be helpful in understanding how their additional efforts are driving demand.
Trade promotion management – Once the profit planner is online, we will begin working with partners in working toward a trade promotion management system that can BOTH keep track of trade promotion efforts as well as leverage machine learning to help drive additional demand.
What was 2019 about?
During 2019 we focused on – Organizational Effort to reduce labor and EFFORT. – Everyone in sales, customer service and supply chain in the Drug and Dollar channels are trying to do more with less. Consolidations and mergers as well as cost reduction initiatives are leading to organizations trying to manage their business with substantially less labor costs.
Demand Visualizer – After talking to our users, we found that many had to spend an EXCESSIVE AMOUNT OF TIME, taking Excel data, combining it with their enterprise systems and try to bring multiple factors into the information for both their sales teams and their management. The new demand visualizer allows an organization to get multiple dashboards into a single view. Our first step in 2019 was to consolidate excel and views of the business
Purchasing – One of the first things our user base asked us to do as part of their daily efforts for both the retailer and their internal management was to bring in purchasing information through the purchase order process.
Forecast accuracy – With forecasts coming from a different system than EDI, it becomes IMPERATIVE to understand what is driving sales (into the retailer DC). By combining forecasting key indicators with other data, it immediately helps an organization understand any increases or decreases in demand.