POWERED BY
GROCERYSHOP 2018 PERSONA
SUPPLY CHAIN NAVIGATORAs the Supply Chain Navigator, you want to optimize inventory supply levels to meet customer demands and
achieve sales, margin, and inventory goals. You need to have the right inventory at the right quantity, in the right
place, at the right time, and have it at the right price. This means minimizing in-stock product shortages and
spoilage, increasing inventory turns and keeping costs down, while making recommendations to improve
productivity, food quality and safety, and operational efficiencies.
YOU REALIZE:
• Out-of-stock (OOS) is costly on multiple fronts – missed sales opportunities and loss of once-loyal shoppers. Managing appropriate in-stock inventory service levels for tens of thousands of SKUs is challenging for grocers.
• The shift to source food products locally and regionally is becoming more evident; therefore, retailers need to consider the desirability and how to support small and medium-sized producers.
• Sustainability, food quality, and food safety are growing concerns for grocers, distributors and growers.
• More retailers are using “order-to-shelf” systems that have the potential to reduce store labor and inventories.
ROADBLOCKS TO TACKLE:
• Finding the right balance: keeping shelves full to meet customer demands and optimize service levels and inventory turns, while minimizing spoilage and cost.
• The shift to source local/regional products will mean product ranges are more frequently rotated to reflect seasonal and inventory availability. This will require greater efficiencies, collaboration, communication, and traceability from small and medium-sized producers, which may be challenging.
• Lack of communication and coordination – “Order- to-Shelf” System: Distributor/supplier may not be accustomed to this kind of close coordination and any breakdown in communication can lead to product shortages and empty shelves.
NEED HELP? STOP BY THE CONCIERGE BOOTH #501
www.fitforcommerce.com | [email protected]
NEED HELP? STOP BY THE CONCIERGE BOOTH #501
POWERED BY
RELATED RESOURCES IN THIS PACKET
To help you navigate the expo hall, check out the category map for some of the solutions and
technologies that you will want to explore.
FitForCommerce has also developed Best Practices Checklist and Key Questions to Ask Providers designed to help you prepare and make the most out of your time
at Groceryshop.
Date
Oct 29
Oct 29
Oct 29
Oct 29
Oct 30
Oct 30
Oct 30
Oct 31
Oct 31
Time
8:30-9:10AM
10:00-10:40AM
3:30-4:10PM
4:15-4:55PM
8:30-9:10AM
9:15-9:55AM
10:00-10:40AM
9:00-10:00AM
10:10-11:10AM
Location
Track Room 3
Track Room 3
Track Room 3
Track Room 3
Track Room 3
Track Room 3
Track Room 3
Track Room 3
Track Room 3
Type
Session
Keynote
Session
Session
Presentation
Session
Session
Workshop
Workshop
Session title
Technologies Creating Operational Efficiencies
Technologies Transforming Food Sourcing and Production
Innovations in Sourcing: New Ways to Discover and Access Products
Food Safety & Supply Chain Transparency: Blockchain, IOT, and Beyond
New Insights on Supply Chain Evolution From Consulting Firms and Industry Analysts
Using New Technologies to Streamline Operations
VC Perspectives on Technologies to Improve Speed and Visibility in the Supply Chain
Prioritizing Supply Chain Investments to Lower Costs and Shorten Lead Times
Managing and Reducing Waste in Grocery
RELATED SESSIONS
www.fitforcommerce.com | [email protected]
POWERED BY
973.379.7399 | [email protected] | www.fitforcommerce.com
SUPPLY CHAIN NAVIGATOR
Order Management System: Best Practices
1. Look for Order Management Systems (OMS) that can help you address key improvement areas. OMS generally refers to the entire cycle, from taking the initial order, collecting payment for delivery of the product, order exceptions, customer management, inventory management, and reverse logistics. Solutions may address some or all of this process. Reduce costs by reducing errors; improve cash flow by speeding up the entire process; and increase customer satisfaction by improving communication.
2. Involve your entire organization when selecting and implementing. Any department can sabotage the effort if they’re not on board. Get the team together early and align their objectives.
3. Identify and analyze the key bottlenecks in your order management process before implementation. Spend time focusing on these high-impact areas. A successful implementation encourages automation and successful process reengineering. Make your compromises in other areas, if you must, but get this right.
4. A single database is the key to an effective order management process. If you’re going to the trouble of changing your systems and processes, ensure that this results in a single database structure. Minimize the amount of redundancy in data set-up. This can eliminate potential problems and improve efficiencies.
5. Continually look for ways to improve and optimize your use of your OMS. Following implementation, companies typically utilize only 25-35% of a system’s functionality. Proper training is the key to improving your adoption rates. Review performance with the OMS team and the selected provider 60-90 days after implementation to find other ways to improve performance.
6. Quantify benchmarks early in the process. “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” Develop key performance indicators (KPIs) and create a corporate dashboard for effective reporting of each function or department. Understand what kinds of analytics are offered to you “out of the box” versus ones you need to write yourselves. Keeping visibility on these metrics will ensure they get attention.
7. Manage the labor force. Labor is probably the largest controllable expense item on your income statement. Successful implementation of an OMS should free up labor for other uses. If it doesn’t do that, the ROI will likely not be achieved.
8. Minimize the number of times orders are touched by your team. The fewer touches of the order and the product itself (no matter how “inconsequential” the touch), the less the total cost of order processing and fulfillment. A good OMS manages exceptions and pushes those exceptions to the right person for proper handling. Errors and delays happen where there are too many touches. Minimize them.
9. Think hard before you customize software and make sure it’s worth the effort. Customization, while an attractive option, introduces new costs and uncertainties to a project. While changing a department’s ways is also risky, that can often be more easily and visibly managed than customization. Think about how to change your processes before you look to customizations.
10. Customer management is as much a part of order management as any back-office logistics component. Customer follow-ups, including order changes, tracking inquiries, cancellations and returns are costly, and even more so if the CSR is looking into multiple systems with inconsistent data.
POWERED BY
973.379.7399 | [email protected] | www.fitforcommerce.com
SUPPLY CHAIN NAVIGATOR
Order Management System:Key Questions to Ask Providers
Company
1. How long have you been in this business?
2. How many clients have you sold? How many have you lost, and why?
3. What clients fall into your “sweet spot”?
4. What peripheral or support services do you offer (e.g., ecommerce, custom development, logistics)?
5. What do you offer “out of the box?
Products / Services
1. Is your solution offered as perpetual licensed software or on-demand multi-tenant solution?
If perpetual license:
a. What are the hosting requirements?
b. What should I expect regarding upgrades (timing, pain and support)?
c. Do you provide customization/implementation services?
d. What are your after-launch support services?
e. Can a third party provide customization/implementation?
If SAAS/ASP:
a. Do all tiers include maintenance and support?
b. How often are new features introduced? What can I do if I need a feature you don’t have?
c. What level of online security do you provide?
2. Does your product work with a single database for all the company’s back-office functions or will I need to synchronize with several others?
3. How long will a simple installation take? A sophisticated one?
4. Do you offer a free trial? What’s it missing?
5. What technical support services are available?
a. Is your support team located in the US or abroad?
b. What is your SLA for support issues?
6. Do you have a support knowledge base, community forum, or applications that are shared by customers?
7. How can I export data if I change platforms?
8. Do I own and control my data?
9. How do I import data to get started?
10. Do you provide operational audits?
Features
1. What key features are included in your solution?
a. What features are currently missing, on your roadmap, does management love? Shoppers?
b. Can your solution support clienteling?
2. What is your product’s competitive advantage over other packages? Why?
a. Order entry? Customer management? Inventory? A particular vertical?
3. How comprehensive and flexible is your management dashboard?
a. Can I pull in statistics that come from other, contiguous systems?
4. Is your OMS independent of my selected eCommerce platform?
5. Do you require use of your selected payment processing system or can I choose (or continue to use) the methods I prefer? How much more difficult would it be to use my choice?
6. Does your platform include robust integrated systems, such as logistics, returns management, accounting, marketing, merchandising, analytics, call center and customer management?
a. Can I integrate your OMS with other, more robust versions of these systems?
b. How does your platform integrate with other systems - eCommerce, CMS, analytics and back-office (logistics, returns management, call center and customer management)?
i. If I use third-party systems, does the performance degrade?
ii. Which applications do you already have standard or custom integrations built?
7. Do you have a management console?
a. What can I manage with it?
b. Does it include reporting and a dashboard?
i. Please describe your reporting capabilities (batch vs. real-time, ad hoc, etc.).
ii. Please provide a list of standard reports.
Pricing
1. Do you price by the user, concurrent user, server, site, or other?
2. Why do I want to pay to upgrade to the next level?
3. How do you charge for annual support? What about maintenance?
4. Are there any hidden fees (e.g., implementation, transaction costs, revenue sharing)?
POWERED BY
973.379.7399 | [email protected] | www.fitforcommerce.com
SUPPLY CHAIN NAVIGATOR
Supply (Cold) Chain / Fulfilling the Last Mile:Best Practices
1. Build a safer, smarter and connected Cold Chain Solution to ensure food integrity and freshness from “Farm-to-Table”. Leverage available technology to document and store data, digitally monitor and provide on-demand real-time product visibility and movement traceability.
2. Improve Food Transparency & Traceability. For grocers and consumers, it’s important to know where the food comes from and to have enough information about what’s in the food and its origins. Track product movement through every stage of the supply chain, never losing visibility.
3. Proactively Prevent Waste with 24/7 Monitoring and Real-time Notifications. Leverage monitoring tools that can alert you when product starts to go out of temperature range so you can immediately intervene at any stage of the supply chain.
4. Optimize Routes to Reduce Delivery Time. Delivery is expensive — gas, vehicle maintenance, and employee salaries all contribute to delivery overhead. To help keep costs inline, leverage analytics and statistics to optimize routes and reduce delivery time.
5. Develop Standard Operating Procedures (SOP). Temperature- controlled shipping necessitates strict standard operating procedures (SOPs). Establish clear processes to further mitigate risks and close any gaps.
6. Achieve End-to-End Collaboration from Key Stakeholders. All key stakeholders should be involved up front to define roles, expectations, and requirements to reduce risk. Collaboration with all key stakeholders is critical for long-term temperature controlled success in the cold chain. Establishing processes and setting expectations is a necessary component, along with sharing of data.
Fulfilling the Last Mile
1. Integrate a Perpetual Inventory Solution within your Ecommerce Platform. Enhance the online shopping experience by displaying actual product inventory status in real-time by fulfillment locations. This will minimize product substitutions needed and improve order fulfillment efficiency.
2. Explore Options to Fulfill the Last Mile. Grocers can leverage their physical store locations to fulfill customer orders, and fulfill the “last mile” with delivery and click-and-collect services. These services are available from 3rd party providers, which allow grocers to quickly test the waters, with minimum upfront investment.
3. Provide Online Order Visibility and Traceability. Online shoppers want full visibility into where their order is at any given point in time, and reassurance that their order is being transported to them safe and sound. They also like to track delivery: when it was packed, when it was shipped and the expected time of delivery.
4. Coverage and Capability Required to Shorten Delivery Times. Shoppers generally want their merchandise as soon as possible. To accomplish a speedy delivery, your provider must have delivery resources – strategically placed distribution centers and delivery teams – close to where consumers live.
5. Expertise in Home Delivery. Choose a provider with committed individuals that demonstrate high standards for interpersonal communications and etiquette. The right people drive a consistent, quality experience that creates repeat customers.
The Cold Chain Dilemma continues to inhibit online grocery adoption, as the issue revolves around consumer’s lack of trust that perishables are not consistently transported and stored in proper temperatures from “farm-to-table”, therefore, affecting food quality and safety. Below are some best practices you should absolutely consider when addressing the cold chain dilemma and fulfilling the Last Mile.
POWERED BY
973.379.7399 | [email protected] | www.fitforcommerce.com
SUPPLY CHAIN NAVIGATOR
Supply (Cold) Chain / Fulfilling the Last Mile:Key Questions to Ask Providers
Company
1. How long have you been in this business?
2. Who is on your leadership team, and what are their experiences?
3. How many clients have you sold to? What is your churn rate, and why?
4. What size or types of clients fall into your “sweet spot”?
5. What peripheral or support services do you offer (e.g., technology, process analysis and reengineering, 24/7 customer services)?
6. Who are your current partners and why? Who have you worked with in the past?
7. Who are the team members I'll be working with and what is their experience?
Products / Services
1. Do you staff your own in-house help desk onsite or outsource to a third party?
a. If outsource, where is the help desk located?
b. The best service providers staff their help desks onsite.
2. What are the terms of your service-level agreement (SLA)?
a. It's important to have a strong SLA with reasonable terms.
3. What is your model for High Availability?
a. You can't afford downtime due to an IT issue. How they'll ensure uninterrupted continuity of operations should a failure occur.
4. Do you provide around-the-clock automatic and remote monitoring? What type of automated remote monitoring and management (RMM) solution do you use?
5. Do you provide Cloud services? Is your cloud services proprietary or are they outsourced to a third party?
a. There are security concerns with any provider that outsources cloud services to a third-party vendor.
6. If you provide fulfillment services, where are your distribution centers?
7. If you provide fulfillment services, are there any types of products that you can’t fulfill?
8. How long will it take to deploy?
9. What does your onboarding process look like?
a. Ensure your provider has a plan in place so that you are not left on your own to deal with the transition and adjustment period. A good managed provider will be there to support you and your employees throughout.
10. Who are your current partners? Who have you worked with in the past?
11. What client references can you offer? Who are running the same kind of applications I'll be using?
Features
1. What key features are included in your solution?
2. What features are currently missing?
3. What new features have been added recently?
4. What does the product roadmap look like?
a. Choose a vendor who is passionate about building rich new features into their technology.
5. What is your product‘s competitive advantage over other packages? Why?
a. Price? Dashboard? Ease of use? Flexibility?
6. What does your dashboard include? How customizable is it?
7. Will your solution scale with my business?
a. You don’t want to find yourself shopping for a new solution
8. How does your platform integrate with other Systems, including back-office systems, other online shopping channels and/or point solutions?
Pricing
1. How do you price your services? Do you charge for number of users, assets, etc.?
2. How do you charge for annual support? What about maintenance?
3. Are there any additional fees (e.g., implementation, training)?
Groceryshop 2018 .
S21 633
S20 631
S19 629
S18 627
S17 625
S16
S15
S14 623
S13 621
S12 619
S11 617
S10 615
S9 613
S8 611
S7 609
S6
S5
S4
S3 605
S2
S1
ENTRANCE
207 306
505
606
205 304
305 405
604
300
410
413 512
211 610
311 411 510
213
310 511
612
313
301501
Concierge
217 316 519 618
319
416 417
518
215 314 317 516 515 614
225 324 ATTENDEE LOUNGE 525 624
223 322 523 622
323
620
422 423 522
219 318 521
Supply Chain
PRODUCT SHOWCASE
Shoeshine
Lounge
Rebook/
Hosted Q&A
TRACK 3 TRACK 2
331 430 431 530Podcast
Lounge329 428 429 528