Ahold USA gives vendors the scoop
Sharing detailed data with vendors is an idea that has been around since the 1990s, and is gaining new life at Ahold USA Inc.
Ahold, parent company of supermarkets Giant Landover, Stop & Shop New England, Stop & Shop New York Metro, Giant Carlisle, and online grocery Peapod, has partnered with Retail Solutions Inc. (RSI) to introduce shared enterprise business processes with vendors. Ahold USA has leveraged RSI’s data platform and collaboration tools to better align its business goals and daily priorities with its vendor partners.
This collaboration has allowed Ahold USA to improve operational execution, realize new efficiencies and increase product availability. Furthermore, Ahold USA vendor partners, both warehouse and direct store delivery (DSD), have recaptured incremental sales and achieved cost savings through Ahold USA's in-store alerting program and advanced collaborative business analytics.
"With the customer's experience at the center of our success, we recognized the opportunity to create a truly collaborative program where vendors and our retail businesses work together to problem-solve, reach goals and measure the effectiveness of our efforts to create a superior shopping experience for their consumers," said Walt Lentz, senior VP of planning, replenishment and logistics at Ahold USA.
Ahold USA selected RSI as a partner in its vendor collaboration program due to the structured nature of RSi's approach, which uses formal use cases to drive actionable insights through the data provided by Ahold USA. Ahold USA and its vendor partners are thus able to make more informed decisions in near-real time and collaborate on business needs.
Specific areas of action where Ahold USA and its vendors are collaborating include reduced distribution voids, improved on-shelf availability, faster speed to shelf for product introductions, reduced unsaleables and improved promotional execution. The grocer incorporates daily downstream data into alerting and analytic capabilities so that vendors can execute against a single, shared “version of the truth.”
Some ideas from the 1990s, like wide floral print ties and Vanilla Ice, are best left as memories. However, sharing detailed data with vendor partners is an idea that can offer significant benefits for both retailers and the manufacturers and suppliers they work with. While data-sharing has certainly been occurring in the past two decades, it is still nowhere near as common or deep as it could, or probably should, be.
