Burt's Bees
Business Challenge
Inundated with demand data, Burt's Bees needed to streamline reporting and analysis in order to identify insights and communicate action plans
Solution
An accessible demand analytics tool that speaks to both internal and external reporting needs
Business Benefits
• Timely assessment of demand trends
• Improved tracking of retailer's forecasts and projections
The Burt's Bees Target Team was, naturally, looking to grow retail volume — in search of a demand data solution that would help them gain a competitive edge with demand intelligence insights first thing every Monday morning. At the same time, they needed a means of communicating their insights — and the actions they wanted to take — both internally to Burt's Bees headquarters and externally to their Target contacts. As the leading manufacturer in natural personal care, they have over 150 Earth-friendly, natural personal care products under their charge, and need to stay on top of their category and latest product innovations.
SOLYS — Every Day Solution for Every Day Insights
The Burt's Bees Target Team started using SOLYS approximately 18 months ago and, notes Steve Cerrato, Director, Target Team, "I use SOLYS almost every day. It's become part of my toolbox because I can get demand information with a simple point and click." Burt's Bees Target Team Category Manager Kelly Van Roy, agrees. "I use SOLYS every single day — there are innumerable reports built into the solution. Some I access to provide first-thing-Monday-morning reports, and others I pull up on demand from my business analyst or Burt's Bees executives. I've become the go-to person for both because both entities know they can turn to me for fast demand intelligence reports and the data to back them up."
Building Retailer Relationships That Grow Volume
Cerrato credits SOLYS for helping Burt's Bees build sales at Target. "We meet with the business analyst every Tuesday, and we always use SOLYS for those meetings. It's great for tracking the retailer's forecasts and projections. Even though Target has all the data, our business analyst has come to rely on us to advise on order quantities because we can so easily and quickly assess demand trends. Because of SOLYS we know the business thoroughly."
Van Roy provides her buyer with bi-weekly reports based on the challenges and opportunities addressed in the monthly status meetings. She also provides the Target business analyst with weekly reports focusing on, for example, forecasting and inventory, recommended planograms, and seasonality assessments.
She also fulfills on-the-spot requests for demand information reports. "The Business Analyst has so much on her plate, she just doesn't have the time to get the information she needs and InfoRetriever isn't fast, nimble or intuitive enough to provide it to her. She's come to rely on me to provide demand intelligence for her — any time, any day. SOLYS is so fast. And I can create custom item, class, or category groups and build reports using these fields so easily that it's a better use of the analyst's time to have me pull the reports for her. SOLYS speaks both our language and Target's — easily translating demand data into easy-to-understand demand information." The end result, notes Van Roy, "is constant communication with Target. The more information I can provide to her, the better. It makes the analyst's job easier and we're helping Target grow sales."
With SOLYS, Van Roy has been able to improve instock and forecasting with Target for the category. "Each week we're on top of forecasting and instock. We can see when the forecasts are too low, examine long-term trends for the item, and generate new forecasts that ensure items are on the shelves to meet consumer demand."
Builds Internal Relationships
Notes Cerrato, "SOLYS is valuable not only for working with Target, but also when I meet with Burt's Bees headquarters. I use it when I'm working with the forecasting team or marketing folks. I can have SOLYS right there on my laptop and instantly pull up insights when discussing past or future promotions. I can easily give an overview on trends and new items and how items are performing, or cannibalizing. And I can do so from a broader, national perspective."
Because Van Roy can pull Target data into SOLYS on Sunday evening and review it quickly, she has weekly recaps to the Burt's Bees national executives first thing Monday morning. "The biggest use of my time is simply getting data from InfoRetriever. Once that's done, SOLYS instantly places the data into the six reports I have on my SOLYS dashboard. From there, I recap the data, looking for insights, identifying challenges, highlighting new opportunities and proposing ways to address any challenges. They have all this in hand first thing every Monday morning." Notes Van Roy, "The executives think we're superstars. They love the information and the reports — they don't get reports like this from any other team. And when they make special requests for demand information, I can turn things around so quickly that they've started asking the other retail teams why they can't do the same." Which is why more and more companies are implementing SOLYS for insights into all of their key retail accounts.
One of the coolest features, according to Van Roy? "Maps that highlight which distribution centers are heavy or light on things. Because of SOLYS we can all work together — marketing, team leads, supply chain, executives. And we've seen real gains from our promotional, instock and forecasting analysis — because we work together and all have access to these reports from SOLYS." She concludes, "You can do all the demand analysis, promotions and forecasting you want to, but if you don't work with customer service to ensure the items are where they're supposed to be, when they're supposed to be there — what's the point?"
