Category management takes centre stage
Retailers will expect their suppliers to become much more expert at category management as they continue to push own-label products and rationalise their ranges, a leading systems expert has claimed.
Speaking at a recent breakfast briefing organised by the IGD think tank and sponsored by customer management systems provider CAS, Bill Gilmour, industry general manager for consumer products at IBM, criticised the failure of suppliers to collaborate better - between their own internal departments as well as with their retail customers.
“The one thing we can manage is what we do within our organisations,” said Gilmour.
He suggested that systems could be far more effectively used to share information along the supply chain, particularly on trade promotions. This would help to address areas of “maximum dissatisfaction”, he argued, such as in promotional design and implementation; consumer marketing; and customer insight development.
Gilmour said success meant embarking on four key steps, starting with taking advantage of consumer insight data that is available to get a clear idea about the shopper behaviours you are trying to target. “This is not a pipe dream, but data cleanliness is still an issue,” he warned.
Secondly it is necessary to lay the foundations for effective collaboration with customers, he said, which involves identifying those aspects that will most motivate them. “It’s about encouraging them to reward you for execution,” said Gilmour. “This is a two-way game.”
The trouble in the past, he added, was that business relationships have been unnecessarily complex. “We made it so complex and opaque there is always a great deal of suspicion.”
This needs to be followed by the alignment of suppliers’ businesses to support an “integrated commercial proposition”. Gilmour said this meant “taking people all the way from brand awareness right through to point of purchase”. Lastly, he said, it is critical to measure, track and optimise the events involved in the process.
