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CATEGORY MANAGEMENT FROM PAGE 23 out your retail activation, and delivering the category review and cycle with an aligned and collaborative approach. It’s an important opportunity for your business, having the right resources and skills in place to build a best-in-class category review and position you as a category thought leader. Bring solutions to the retailer’s table, not problems, issues or challenges! Haley Group brings to life the best- in-class approach with collaborative partners in the industry – Focus Insights, 3DVR Solutions, and rev Branding – to deliver industry leading thinking and solutions. So, from your perspective, businesses need to embrace category and space management and be fast and agile to be successful. Absolutely. There’s been a belief in the industry, or a blindside in strategy, that only the bigger suppliers can be category thought leaders, and retailers aren’t engaging with smaller suppliers in category plans and space management. While I’m sure that some retailers and suppliers are approaching category management this way, I’ve seen a definite shift in the embrace of the collaborative approach. As I mentioned earlier, the companies that are collaborating with their trade partners and being agile in their approach are experiencing more success and a greater outcome than those that don’t. Over the longer term, this will open the divide with significant competitive advantage to those that choose the collaborative approach. "The companies that are collaborating with their trade partners and being agile in their approach are experiencing more success and a greater outcome than those that don’t. What are the applicable channels for space management? Space management has been around for decades and delivered in many ways, from the early days of visual merchandising with magnet boards and pen-and-ink layouts, and teams of people going from store to store aligning merchandise standards across the chain, to the high-end integrated supply chain to planograms systems that we use today. There’s a critical tipping point when it becomes unviable both financially and practically to go from store to store executing merchandise standards manually without the support of sophisticated space platforms to guide and deliver the outcome. The ability of category and space solutions \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\[is\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\] to uniform and align best practice to every store, allowing strategy to be applied in-store in both a fast and cost-effective way. We’ve worked across different retail sectors and channels, and the need/ question is the same. How do we expand our stores and how do we drive our strategy at retail in a uniform and efficient way? Both retailers and suppliers are benefiting from advancements in space delivering best-in-class planograms, strategy to retail, perfect store plans, manufacturing efficiencies through utilising space in portfolio planning, and embracing space planning as a key part of the category management process. What’s next for Haley Group? Haley Group is well positioned to assist our clients in advancing category and space management and, given our business model, we’ll deliver an agile and efficient solution. With well established and trusted relationships in the industry, we’ll continue to drive category and space solutions to our current and future clients. With technology changes, advancements and new ways of driving efficient results, we develop and deliver the best-in-class solutions now and into the future with a greater focus on leading the category and space industry to share our insights and expertise, shaping the new generation of space experts. I think collaboration and partnerships with complimentary companies will also play an important role in providing more value and insights to our clients. Bringing industry leading solutions to life with wider collaboration with experts in complementary fields, I look forward to sharing more on this in the future. The demand from the trade for expertise and agility will continue and expansion into new industries and sectors will emerge both here and abroad. Even in the current climate of restrictions, one thing’s for sure: change is upon us all, so embracing change and moving fast while being agile will ensure success for our industry. Space a key pillar of success in CM The benefits of a well thought out and executed space plan within category management (CM) guidelines are: Optimisation of category benefits. These are usually translated as increased sales revenue and increased margin. However, other targeted benefits, such as improved working capital and range efficiencies, can also be scoped, targeted and, most importantly, delivered. Consistency of store standards – with the implementation of one plan being the shared goal of both retailers and their supplier partners. Consistency of retail execution. Over the years, this has been a big headache for all concerned. The goal of every category in every store on a national basis all looking the same is now achievable. Some variations of range, brands, pack sizes, etc, will always occur due to store grade and location. However, having one agreed plan based on agreed principles with an agreed view of how it should look in-store certainly takes subjective opinions out of the discussion. About Peter Huskins Peter Huskins is a career retailer who is widely known and respected in the Australian FMCG industry. With extensive experience in department stores, DDS, liquor, and supermarkets, he has been working with suppliers and retailers developing business, category, customer and channel strategy and competitive points of difference for more than 10 years. For more information, call Peter on 0412 574 793 or email peter@shop-ability.com.au Contact David Haley For more information, contact David Haley at Haley Group: E: david. haley@haleygroup.com. au M: 0458 131 277 24 CONVENIENCE WORLD MAR/APR, 2021