Christmas is going to be a little different this year, but not the same different as last year. Back then, with pubs and restaurants closed, grocery experienced a boom in sales. This year’s golden quarter is instead going to be a challenge of balancing supply and demand.
The UK is beset by external supply chain crises that are going to persist well into 2022. It feels like there is very little within suppliers’ control, but this festive season presents a great opportunity to pay attention to the data, tighten business operations, and adapt to working with limited resources.
According to Retail Economics, groceries sales growth is set to fall by 5.8% on last year (https://reports.retail-week.com/the-christmas-forecast-2021/index.html). Early optimism because of the vaccine rollouts has been undercut by a perfect storm of external supply issues, labour shortages, and changes to taxes and benefits. External factors affecting both your supply chain and your customers buying habits will include:
It’s a complex web of factors, for sure. The only way we will be able to navigate it with a degree of certainty is by making decisions backed by evidence and insight. Suppliers will need to determine where to distribute stock daily, rather than solely relying on predictions based on last year’s sales data. You will need to understand the true demand for your products through good quality data presented intuitively. Using best-in-class data visualisation tools like SKUtrak can help you keep track of how products are moving through the supply chain, including:
With that data infrastructure in place, visualisation best practices can then help you quickly share insight about true demand with retailers to:
When working with limited resources, faced with the decision of where to allocate limited stock, you need to understand the picture at depot, store and SKU, on a daily basis. It may feel like damage control at times but put in the effort to maximise efficiency now and you will thank yourself next year when you have a working blueprint for dealing with persistent supply chain issues. When the supply chain does return to a degree of normality, you will be at the head of the pack for knowing where to put your product so it has the biggest impact on sales. Put in the work now and we can still have a solid golden quarter.
Be the first to see when we publish something new, subscribe to our blog today:
SKUtrak from Atheon Analytics provides a rich, visual, interactive analysis of trading performance to help consumer goods businesses build better, more valuable relationships with their retail customers.
SKUtrak from Atheon Analytics provides a rich, visual, interactive analysis of trading performance to help consumer goods businesses build better, more valuable relationships with their retail customers.
Privacy Policy Terms & Conditions Copyright © 2023 Atheon Analytics Ltd All rights reserved.
SKUtrak from Atheon Analytics provides a rich, visual, interactive analysis of trading performance to help consumer goods businesses build better, more valuable relationships with their retail customers.
Privacy Policy Terms & Conditions Copyright © 2020 Atheon Analytics Ltd All rights reserved.