Measuring and driving retail execution outcomes with 3rd party merchandisers​

Having an AI image recognition driven objective, automated, quick way to measure merchandising impact allowed the manufacturer to improve merchandising KPIs like OSA by double digit points, while freeing up store reps from any manual audits.

Biz question

For many CPGs who make use of 3rd party merchandising providers (3PL), a consistent need is to objectively measure the impact of retail merchandising. Our customer — a large player in the ‘pay for scan’ gaming cards category came with the challenge of measuring the impact of retail execution services (retail ROI).

Key barrier for them was the lack of an objective measure to track the impact of retail merchandising. What did the rep find when they walked into the store? What did the rep fix before walking out of the store? How many out of stocks where fixed on the shelf? What action was taken on the remaining unresolved out of stocks? How many and which price labels were missing Before and After the rep visit? Did the rep fix Planogram compliance issues before leaving the store?

Today’s solutions rely on the rep to self-report, which is error prone, time consuming and highly subjective. Another option is to get reps to take pictures of the shelf, and a back-office team goes through the pictures manually — which is also time consuming and error prone.

What is needed is an automated, fast and objective way to measure what the rep achieved in the store. Snap2Insight’s AI Image Recognition technology helped this manufacturer to do just that.

Solution

Snap2Insight’s Measure Merchandising Impact solution uses pictures taken by reps to measure what actions were taken in-store. Snap2Insight uses patent pending AI Image Recognition technology to convert shelf pictures into data. Our solution measures key metrics like On Shelf Availability (OSA), empty slots, products without price labels, POG Compliance, POP presence etc from the pictures. Where both Before and After merchandising pictures are taken, we can measure the ‘impact’ as the difference between Before and After pictures. Where only After merchandising pictures are taken, we report the state of shelf at the end of the visit.

Being able to track rep/store/sku level results objectively and quickly allowed field managers to provide the required coaching to improve execution by rep. It gave our customer the required visibility to measure how well the 3PL partner was doing, and provide a single source of truth to partner in achieving flawless retail execution.

Impact

Measuring the impact enabled identifying areas of improvement, which resulted in double digit increase in impact at the shelf metrics including OSA, pack-out, fixing price labels etc. All this was done while streamlining the store visit to automate all shelf audits and cut down overall time by 10-15%. Finally, store level data was a valuable addition for the manufacturer especially given the lack of data in their ‘pay for scan’ category.