Industry - Retail
Availability problems cost money from the moment a shelf empties, but most estates only discover them on a walk-round or in the end-of-day numbers.
It starts at the shelf. Make that reportable and head office can finally see which stores are driving the loss.
Your shelves tell you what is wrong hours after it started costing you.
“We find out a line is empty when a customer tells us, or when the day's sales come in short.”
Availability is checked on a walk-round, which means the gap between a shelf emptying and anyone noticing is however long it takes to get back to that aisle.
“Stock counts say we have it. The shelf says we don't.”
System stock and shelf reality drift apart through mis-picks, misplaced units and shrinkage, and the count that would reconcile them is manual, periodic, and out of date the moment it finishes.
“Every store runs the layout slightly differently, and head office only sees the sales figures.”
Planogram compliance is checked by exception or on a visit, so the difference between the agreed layout and the actual shelf stays invisible until someone is standing in front of it.
“We are throwing away stock we could have sold if we had known earlier.”
Short-life lines get marked down too late or not at all, because nobody has a live view of what is about to expire against what is moving.
“Our staff spend their shift counting instead of serving.”
Manual stock checks and shelf audits consume hours that were budgeted for customers.
The shelf already knows what is happening. The job is getting that to head office while it still matters.
8.3%
of fast-moving consumer goods lines are out of stock at any given moment in a typical store, and three quarters of those gaps start inside the store, in ordering and shelf replenishment, not in the supply chain.
Gruen and Corsten, A Comprehensive Guide to Retail Out-of-Stock Reduction, 2007
What fixed looks like
ShelfSense (Shelf & Availability Vision)
conceptComputer vision on the shelf edge that reports gaps, misplaced stock and planogram drift as they happen, rather than on the next walk-round. The same underlying vision capability applied to site safety and kitchen waste, trained specifically for retail shelf conditions.
Site & Head Office Dashboard
Availability, compliance and waste data rolled up from individual stores to head office, so a multi-site operator can see which stores are driving the loss instead of a chain-wide average.
Agents
A replenishment agent flags a line about to run dry on today's rate of sale, not last week's average. A markdown agent surfaces short-life stock while there is still margin to recover.
Tell us how you find out a shelf is empty
Our offices
- DGxC Limited
United Kingdom - DGxC US
United States
New York & Chicago - DGxC Canada
Canada
Ottawa & Toronto