When AFS Technologies began working with Carlsberg Baltics, the main challenges were a brand with a number one position in a declining beer market and aggressive competition looking to buy market share.
So we looked to focus on activities that would address our objectives: save time – becoming efficient and effective; manage ‘out of stocks’; and gather intelligence at the point of purchase.
The Vision for Carlsberg was to move to the perfect store execution. By implementing retail execution software, our sales teams would provide the backbone of data collection in store and the ability to create a perfect store scorecard.
From the data analysis, we could then track – analyse – improve.
Saving time by focusing on little steps
Focusing on how a person carried out a task or activity, we were surprised at some of the results. Some low-value tasks took too long, and understanding this allowed the re-prioritization and refocusing of teams to what was important, and added value.
We also found great variation – in both time and quality – across the teams by finding the best practise and using the retail execution software as a coaching mechanism; we had a consistence approach, a motivated salesforce and KPIs that managed themselves.
A great example: on one task we saved three minutes per customer and across the account base we saved 161 hours – or 20 man days – while still looking for other opportunities to save time. And there were many.
Our war on ‘out of stocks’
We attacked out of stock through two mechanisms. Firstly, by combining big data – weather information, with sales stats, promotional plans, and delivery schedules – we created predictive orders with AFS in the software, which proved to be 80% more accurate than the manual orders previously created and saved about 10 minutes per order to create.
And then through shelf sensors (IoT) – by placing weight sensors under each line in a cooler, we could see the buying patterns of the consumer, how long a product was out of stock, and when it was replenished. This was great insight and allowed our salesforce to advise the retailer on the impact of consumer choice and missed revenue opportunities.
Retail execution was transformational in the business, moving our salesforce from transactional sellers to trusted business advisors, and our business to working with qualitative rather than anecdotal insight.
For more information, click here for a presentation on the perfect store and click here for information on AFS’ retail execution software.