The Category Cure
Schering-Plough Corporation is a global science-based healthcare company with leading prescription, consumer and animal health products. Within Schering-Plough's HealthCare Products division, there are three business units that market such recognized brands as Coppertone and Bain de Soleil suncare products, Claritin and Afrin allergy relief products, and Dr. Scholl's footwear products -- all of which accounted for $1,093 million in 2005 sales.
In the past, these three business units utilized separate, non-integrated repositories of product information in order to make category management and logistics decisions. These data silos contain product sales metrics, ACNielsen syndicated data and retailer point-of-sale (POS) data, which are all needed for identifying trends and creating optimal product promotions, assortments and opportunities.
A Deluge of Data
The challenge existed, however, in how to efficiently collaborate with different users across the division that had access to and knowledge about individual data sets in ways that supported timely planning and bottom-line decision-making.
Data sharing was slow as it involved relying on the knowledge and availability of other staff to obtain it in the first place. The separate, disconnected systems did not afford a quick or convenient means to view important store-level product information such as Bain de Soleil pricing and in-stock availability for each sunscreen level and tube size -- in order to fully understand the overall state of the business. It was a laborious task to analyze product shipment metrics alongside consumer consumption data for all the sizes and colors of Dr. Scholl's footwear to obtain a complete view of market dynamics. Then, trying to add internal or external forecast information to that in a manner that enabled insight into forecast demand versus actual sales was time-consuming and tedious.
Promoting Company Wellness
The company realized that a single, integrated system for management of this demand data would enable their analysts to better control in-stock levels and to directly improve profitability of highly seasonal products by having the right product at the right store at the right time to support ongoing as well as promotional efforts. With such a system in place, analysts in charge of developing modulars would greatly benefit from wireless laptop access within a modular room so they could immediately address questions in real time.
After reviewing the technology options available, Schering-Plough selected Vision Chain based on its ability to meet the following criteria: 4Technology platform utilizing an Oracle database that easily integrates with all internal systems; scales to accommodate additional users, business units and future data sources; and satisfies individual business unit customized needs.
4Architecture based on standards-based technologies versus proprietary tools. "We...get increased capabilities as a result of the underlying architecture that Vision Chain is built on," explains Bobby Dennis, category manager, Schering-Plough. "The most recent benefit has been the Microsoft Office Integration that has been released in the latest version of Vision Chain. We have the ability on the fly to adjust reports within Microsoft Excel or PowerPoint." 4Proven capability to support global analytics that would allow the company to meet future needs involving international data.
Better Than Ever
As a first project, Schering-Plough chose to focus on integrating weekly, U.S.-based POS and inventory data for the world's No. 1 retailer. Within eight weeks, the majority of the system's users were up and running, with benefits realized almost immediately for users within both category management and supply chain departments.
Category management analysts now perform current and historical analysis of store modular alignment to view how items and the modulars themselves perform. They also have the ability to drill up or down to thousands of specific metrics to identify specific product or product line availability issues as well as analyze data rather than spend time running and formatting reports.
"We now have the ability to track adjustments on a store level to better understand true product performance versus store count increases," says Dennis. "We can also track outlying factors that may have been unread in the past. We are housing and monitoring category location year over year to better understand what optimal store setup looks like for our category. We are also finding increased ways to analyze the data for increased insights into the business trends."
What's more, category management analysts can now improve its "Store of the Community" analysis -- one of Schering-Plough's largest focus areas -- which identifies opportunity gaps based on item and store trait combinations.
"We are finding opportunities to sell to customers that may have not been obvious in the past," says Dennis. "We are now looking at stores that meet certain criteria around geography or demographic selections. This increase is not sizeable on an individual item basis but do add up to multiple percent increase to the overall sales of the team."
On the supply chain side, analysts also benefit from improved in-stock levels; an enhanced view of inventory data at the store/item level; and improved logistical planning for highly seasonal products with a typically short selling season.
What's Next?
Schering-Plough has plans to integrate company shipment data, forecast information, international data points and POS data from additional retailers. Currently, "We are in the process of adding multiple retailers along with syndicated data to our system," says Dennis, who admits this is a "slow internal process."
But once everything is said and done, Dennis is confident that the Vision Chain tool will increase the value and speed of insights around the category data, which in turn will increase Schering-Plough's relationship with retailers within the market.