AWG corporate merchandising is going through a vast transformation on many levels. One of the most significant changes being technology. Enabling technology is one of the key focus areas of AWG’s Convergence initiative. With the importance of Convergence to the overall strategy of AWG, technology remains a critical component of our success. With the improvements in technology come overwhelming improvements in efficiencies for both our corporate merchandising team and our members.
Space Planning Technology Enhancements
Space planning is one of the most crucial pillars of the corporate merchandising department. It is the bridge between the category deep dives done by our category management group and the execution of the projects at store level. In 2021, we partnered with the space planning division of Acosta to assist our AWG teams in creating planograms for our nine AWG divisions. In November 2022, Acosta invested in an automation technology for creating multiple planograms. Our division teams use this technology when we go through category reviews, category initiatives, and category refreshes. This new automation program has cut the time it takes to create planograms in half and allows for more time for our AWG space planning team to go through the planograms in greater detail and catch abnormalities and efficiency improvements to help make the sets more productive for our members.
Future Enhancements
Our AWG space planning department is getting a much-needed upgrade to its space planning software. We are partnering with SymphonyAI to upgrade to a cloud-based space planning software. Their i2e program will bring us improved processes that will, in some cases, save our internal planners hours during each initiative with the automation of data loading alone. The program also allow its users to log in wherever they are to work on projects. There will be no clunky downloading of software, or hoping software updates were not going to break down and stop productivity of our team.
The cloud-based program will also allow us to provide space planning license subscriptions to our members of all different sizes. They will be able to purchase as many licenses as they would need for their business through our SymphonyAI partnership. Members will use these space planning licenses to modify our base planograms with their local, unique, or DSD items. This will help our members better execute category initiatives and resets on a more personalized level to fit their customer base.
Category Management
Rest of market (ROM) syndicated data is a critical component of our category initiative and review process. We partner with Nielsen and Circana (formerly IRI) to pull external data sets into our assortment optimization tool. The category manager can then evaluate, by division, what the rest of the market is selling that our AWG assortment is missing. After it has determined what we are missing, the category manager will follow up with the supplier to procure those items into each division making our assortment much stronger and relatable to what the customers are already purchasing in our trade areas. The rest of market data we obtain from our syndicated data sources gives us a distinctive competitive edge when we utilize what it tells us to make our Convergence strategy more powerful, allowing our members to be more aggressive and win at shelf.
CATEGORY MANAGEMENT + SPACE PLANNING = WINNING
The category managers play a critical part in our planogram creation process. When the assortment is determined by the category manager and the center store leadership, the category manager then takes that assortment and ranks the items to direct the space planning teams in creating each varying set size to fit our member’s needs. Currently, this process requires a fair amount of time for the category manager to dedicate out of their busy schedules.
Future Enhancements
Building on the need to increase efficiencies across the board, we are exploring assortment optimization tools that will free up a substantial amount of time for our category managers and allow them to focus on bringing more deals to our members. This optimization tool will allow the category managers to lock in certain items for each set based on the importance to the category or item attributes that are important to the assortment (gluten free, organic, etc).
