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Core lines are the bread and butter of a retail organisation.
These important products are seldom unique to the retailer, instead being
readily available at various shops on the high street. If your store doesn’t
have that core line when the customer wants it they’ll simply find it elsewhere;
the sale of that core line product has been lost and your customer has been
exposed to a competitor’s shopping environment at an unquantifiable cost to you.
Even if a particular core line is unique to a retailer its availability is
obviously vital, as it represents such a high proportion of overall sales.
The Core Line Audit Service
As with all of Orridge’s specialist services this can be
implemented on a small scale to ascertain if a core line availability issue is
actually suggested. If this is the case, then the activity can be appropriately
intensified to provide a more definitive assessment of the issue. To ensure an
authentic view of stores’ performance the activity is usually performed
unannounced. The retailer is provided with useful reports for each store visited
and each store is given guidance so that immediate action can be taken to
improve core line availability.
Benefits of the Service
The information collected is of immediate benefit and is clearly
the primary reason for undertaking this task, providing the customer with an
assessment of whether or not a core line availability problem is likely to exist
within its organisation. Other important benefits include: -
- Improved customer satisfaction and therefore loyalty.
- Sales of cores lines protected.
- Stores with stock management issues identified.
- Store awareness that this is an important area of focus.
How it Works
Each core line ‘facing’ is scanned with an Orridge HHT using a
‘shopper’s eye view’ (if it can’t be seen, it may as well not be there at all).
Thereafter, the following process isperformed: -
- Scan any shelf edge labels where no core line stock is present for
a separate report.
- Identify if any unavailable core line products are present in the stockroom.
- Identify if any ‘unavailable’ core lines are hidden on the sales floor.
- Inform store management of observations and advise of any immediate action that
can be taken to improve product availability.
A bespoke reporting suite is individually tailored by Orridge’s
in-house team of software developers to enable the customer to first define if a
problem exists that needs to be addressed, if yes, some suggestions for where to
concentrate further effort.
Review and Action
Orridge strives to provide the retail sector with information that
has the potential to improve the way it operates. We also aim, where possible,
to take an active role in solving any issues that are identified. For this
reason Orridge suggests its participation in client review meetings throughput
the process so that it can bring its supply chain experience to the discussions.
Through strategic targeted activity Orridge can turn quality information into
positive action. |
