HEADQUARTERS/STORES COMMUNICATION AND PLANOGRAMS IN-SEASON MANAGEMENT

ibs Space Planning provides solutions that fit any retailers' organization mode (centralized, decentralized, mixed):

• Impose planograms to your stores and consolidate the results at any level: country, formats, region, banner…
• Give orientations and recommendations to stores: ibs Space Planning provides you tools to create theoretical planograms that can be applied to a specific or generic store format. Depending on the organizational mode, stores are free to apply or not these recommendations given by the headquarters.
• Enhance the communication between headquarters and stores: take advantage of our information flow module ibs Workflow, to implement customized communication processes, and involve stores from the beginning with the process for a better application.
• Manage your ranks: to answer each rank need, ibs Space Planning helps you during the planogram update stage to create planograms versions (one planogram corresponding to one rank).

LISTEN TO WHAT STORES HAVE TO SAY

Stores hold precious information on consumer behaviours directly gathered in-store.
Valorize this contribution to make the right decisions for your stores and to improve the communication headquarters/stores.

The following analyses help you deal with this added-value information:

• SWOT Analysis: implement performing reports to improve your on-site knowledge
  • Store feedback analysis: improve your knowledge on store specificities, market trends, and competitive environment…
  • Market opportunities analysis: market observations, trends analysis, and competitor strategy analysis…
  • Store performance comparison: gather returns on store experience, analyze successful stores to transpose to other sites, understand the differences of results…
  • Treat your weaknesses: your weaknesses are highlighted and you can take corrective actions to reduce them.
• Store specificities analysis:
  • Demographic criteria: size of the population, type of the population: young, senior, student…
  • Geographical criteria: seaside / country side / mountain location, urban / rural…
  • Climate: cold, humid, warm, temperate…
  • Cultural and ethical characteristics: regional, national way of consumption, ethnic consumption…
  • Economic criteria: socio-professional category, incomes…
  • Competitive environment: number of competitors, competitor positioning

REINFORCE THE STORE / CENTRAL COMMUNICATION

With our solution, you will be able to make the communication clearer and faster between stores and headquarters. Indeed, information is transmitted on real time basis between actors that will certainly improve their responsiveness to complex situations. Information becomes more reliable and, if needed, communication flows can be automated.
Therefore, you can save money and time by avoiding rework or badly informed decision-making,so by correctly implementing from the beginning.

Also, our solution is flexible to any organization process:

• Store viewpoint integration: stores are feeling understood and considered.
• Assortment allocation notification: stores are informed on time if there is a new assortment / planogram.
• Correct implementation of recommendations and advices
• Results consolidation at a chosen level: cluster, region, country, etc…
• Store test: planogram testing in one store and spreading out to a bigger target in case of success

PLANOGRAM UPDATE AND IN-SEASON POSITIONING MANAGEMENT

“2/3 of all planogrammed categories require changes on a monthly basis”

Planograms should be constantly updated to keep up with the changing marketplace. New products are continuously added or removed from the market and planogram update is essential for both headquarters and stores in order to maintain data reliability.

• A real-time follow up on stores positioning assures if the choices done were the right ones in term of assortment allocation (based on positioning analysis and comparison reports)
• A re-positioning process can be applied immediately to respond face to the market and company's strategy evolution. A store position can be re-evaluated during the on-going season to better fulfil customers' needs. For example, after a first assortment implementation, a store decides to switch to a bigger assortment, in which case, he can receive the updated planogram linked to the new assortment.
• Improve stores responsiveness: implement our customized and configurable validation cycles to ease the communication and to simplify the communication process.
• Easy planograms update: the range evolution can be integrated on the planogram as soon as they have been added in the assortment and inversely, in case of deleted products. This process can be automatically configured.
• Simulations management: the planogram result comparison reveals how different layouts affect consumer's ability to find new products, and consequently the purchase trigger. Our simulation module is available at any time during the planogram creation and process to evaluate and choose the best final version.

ibs Space planning has been developed as a flexible solution to fit all the organizational processes.