Attention Retailers: Wake Up and Smell the Walmart Coffee!!
| Why all retailers are behind the 8 ball to Walmart. We covered a wide spectrum of topics during our last Downstream Data Share Group session, including best practices around daily data, POS restatements, item synchronization and report timeliness. However, the topic of retailer data availability and its complexity seemed to occupy most of our conversation. Varying stories exist regarding what retailers are willing to share. Could this stem from retailers not being openly transparent and consistent about what they are capable of sharing? Maybe within their walls, communication is missing between the vendor support teams and the buyers resulting in sparse information trickling down to their vendors. The CPG community needs to work together to further educate retailers to appreciate the value that data sharing provides, not only to them, but also consumers and their retail supplier partners. This share group is an excellent forum for our community to create a common knowledgebase about specific retailers and leverage it to educate retailers about best practices and the value to them. As an example, how many CPGs know that Target provides special store-level downloads with over 20 measures including regular dollars, promotional dollars, inventory, etc.? Or that Kmart has a file transfer utility that can automatically download Workbench data? Although retailers offer these special data feeds, they usually don't promote them to their vendor community and there are often additional steps needed to initiate them. Do vendors know that they can get Food Lion store-level daily data at no charge? We have surveyed many CPGs and most believe they must pay a third party service to obtain store-level POS data. That's not true. When Food Lion contracted with a third party to distribute their POS data, they were wise in requiring them to offer the raw data at no charge. But beware! The third party's mapping of the data isn't always documented so there are additional rules to apply to cleanse and harmonize it correctly. By banding together, the CPG community can learn and share best practices needed for cleansing and analyzing retailer data as quickly, accurately and inexpensively as possible. Walmart is the leader by far in communicating their data availability and their expectations for leveraging it which empowers their suppliers to do more for them. Walmart has well over 200,000 Retail Link users analyzing their products and devising methods to increase sales and minimize inventories. How can any other retailer possibly compete against that type of analytic power? The answer is simply that they can't in their current state. Until other retailers step up to the plate and provide more information with the right tools to their suppliers, they will always be behind the eight ball to Walmart. |