Traditional methods of checking goods display for compliance with the planogram are time-consuming for employees: managers and merchandisers. The major consequence of such a process is its labor intensity and, therefore, low accuracy and irrelevance of analytical reports used as the basis for making assumptions about the success of a particular promotion strategy and for managerial decision-making. Management decisions are made too late.
Let’s look at a specific example of how neural networks help improve the process, save time for managers and merchandisers, and enhance operational efficiency.
Table of Сontents
Traditional display check process: only 3% of photos from merchandiser processed
Products are displayed on the shelves according to a planogram approved by the retail chain, manufacturer or supplier of the products. To monitor the display, the CPG company sends merchandisers to the retail outlets who check whether the product is displayed correctly and whether the display standards are met.
Merchandisers ensure that each product is in its place, labels are facing the customer, price tags and POSM are available and placed correctly, and deliver products according to planograms. For reporting purposes, merchandisers fill out paperwork, take photos of shelves, and send these photos to managers.
Several managers manually review the images and evaluate the performance of merchandisers. The process is quite lengthy and labor-intensive, since there are thousands of visits to stores. The manager is becoming less perceptive, and the assessment of photos becomes subjective; it is difficult to aggregate final analytics on the performance of a specific employee, group of goods or outlet.
Let’s look at the numbers. In our experience, merchandisers send about 2,000 photos per day. To process one photo – compare the products in the photo with the planogram – a manager needs about five minutes. This means that it takes more than 166 hours to process all the photos per day, which is more than 20 working days. Merchandisers send tens of thousands of photos per month. For example, a tobacco manufacturer processes 60,000 photos monthly, and a drug manufacturer processes 30,000 of them. With this approach, not only will there not be enough time for other tasks, but you won’t even be able to view the photos received. From our experience, only about 3% of all photos are viewed.
As a result, managers have to deal with incomplete, inaccurate and outdated reports on the presentation of goods in stores. There are no tools to effectively monitor merchandiser performance: unscrupulous employees can briefly check the display, send managers old photos or even skip a visit to the store.
It is impossible to abandon checking the photos, since reports are based on the data obtained after the photos are analyzed. They show how the goods are presented in stores, how much the display corresponds to the planned layout, whether the merchandisers are performing their duties, and also what the competitors are doing. This is necessary at least to make sure that the product is available on the shelf. This directly affects sales.
Checking the display with Goods Checker: managers no longer review photos from merchandisers
Goods Checker changes the process fundamentally by eliminating errors and inaccuracies. Thanks to this IT solution, a manager does not need to waste his time viewing photos from merchandisers and preparing reports based on them. The application generates detailed analytics by brands, categories, retail chains, merchandisers and adds data to reports after processing each photo.
Let’s see what the process is now. The merchandiser takes a photo of the product display using Goods Checker or another application integrated with Goods Checker. Neural networks process the photo in real time mode. After processing, the photo shows which products are positioned correctly, which need to be rearranged, and how many products are placed on the shelf.
Managers are relieved of the task of processing photos, and can devote their time to strategic tasks, non-routine cases and analytics. In our experience, with Goods Checker, the number of analyzed photos increases from 3% to 100%, and planogram compliance rate – from 60% to 90%. All this leads to gain in sales and, accordingly, growth of profits.
Automation = time savings and focus on strategy, not routine
Implementing IT solutions such as Goods Checker not only solves the problem of manager overwork, but also improves data quality significantly. All this helps manufacturers and retailers to add to marketability through accurate analysis of product availability and better supervision over merchandising processes at retail outlets. Managers will be able to make timely fact-based management decisions in reliance on accurate, complete and up-to-date data.
