Kellogg Category Management
Business Challenge
Serving as category manager for several categories, the Kellogg Company Target team was spending more time extracting data from InfoRetriever than developing strategies to drive category growth. Further, Target had evolved its category reporting needs requesting succinct, minimal-page summaries that illustrated key insights. It was time to simplify.
Solution
A fast and effective demand intelligence solution that improves retail team efficiencies by importing and processing demand data, then generates concise fact-based reports that suppliers can share with retailers as a tool for building category sales volume.
Business Benefit
• Improve category management team efficiencies by cutting data extraction time in half
• Provide strategic demand intelligence reports to buyer that the retailer can use to assess retail strategies with each brand in the category
• Create Custom Item Groups that better track historical performance of groups of SKUs in the category
• Identify key drivers of category sales volume
• Track and assess promotional event performance
• Establish effective communication with retailer that builds sales volume for the category
In Spring 2009, the Kelloggs’s Target Team implemented SOLYS, a demand intelligence solution that imports and processes demand data, provides customizable user dashboards for easy one-screen data analysis, and generates fact-based reports that help suppliers and retailers visualize challenges and opportunities and build mutually beneficial volume-building relationships.
Growing Category Volume
Prior to implementing SOLYS, one of the Kellogg Target team's greatest challenges was the labor-intensive process of extracting demand data. Each Monday team members typically spent four to five hours pulling reports, leaving little time to develop strategic, actionable insights they could share with Target buyers that same day.
That all changed with the implementation of SOLYS. Team members saved two to four hours a week because SOLYS imported and processed the data.
"The benefits of these efficiencies cannot be underestimated. SOLYS has reduced data extraction time by up to 50 percent. Now my team spends the majority of its time fleshing out insights and developing strategies that help Target grow category volume," according to Melissa Loar, Category Management for Kellogg's Target Team.
With SOLYS, further efficiencies resulted from the team's ability to create Custom Item Groups that aligned with internal item and category attributes. Prior to SOLYS, team members had to pull four or five different reports from InfoRetriever and then recode brands. Now, SOLYS does all of that for the team. Users spend minutes pulling reports and the rest of the time bulleting insights for presentation to the buyer. Further, the customized data aggregation provides the team with greater analytical depth.
Snapshots That Tell the Story
As a result, the Kellogg Target Team improved its ability to identify category growth drivers and trends for Target and to provide buyers with an accurate, timely picture of the entire category using SOLYS' customizable reports. With SOLYS, Kellogg category captains now provide a complete snapshot of weekly performance to the buyer in a one-page series of charts and graphs that illustrate Target year-to-date performance for all key vendors.
Ultimately, greater efficiencies and customizable reporting have improved the Kellogg Team's ability to provide category trends and detailed brand performance to Target buyers that gives them an in-depth perspective on category drivers. For example, while economic data showed a lesser recessionary trend in fourth quarter 2009, the Kellogg Team demonstrated that consumers were still behaving — and shopping — as they did during the recession. Specifically, promotions and Private Label goods remained key drivers in the short term.
Diagnosing Promotions – from Every Angle
Finally, Kellogg has helped Target improve category sales utilizing SOLYS promotional reports that demonstrate promotional effectiveness. The reports allow buyers to assess promotions from all angles — how the event affected the category, aff ectedpromoted brands and non-promoted brands; and whether inventory levels were adequate for the promotion. With these reports, Target buyers have a diagnostic tool that helps them determine whether to repeat or improve a promotion, or replicate best practices in other categories.
