POI Pulse, September 5, 2016

Source: (Geomarketing September 3, 2016)
“We’re analyzing all the trigger points that send consumers on what we call a ‘Welcome Journey,”‘ says Courtney Stacks, group marketing manager, Strategy & Business Development at Nestlé Waters North America. “Every consumer is different,” she says. “One may come to us from search, another may approach us after seeing a promotion in a store. Learn more

Meijer Connects with Customers and Delivers
Source: (Fox2 Detroit September 2, 2016)

Meijer customers located in the metro Detroit area can sign up for the Shipt smartphone app to have purchases conveniently delivered right to their homes. “This is about giving our customers the gift of time,” says Art Sebastian, the Director of Digital Shopping. You can learn more about the new service from him in the video player above. Learn more and meet Art Sebastian at the POI Fall Summit in Dallas

Join your peers, and invite your sales force enablement, merchandising, pricing execution, retail marketing, and Distributor colleagues to join POI in Saint Louis, MO. at the Retail Execution Summit on September 25-27. Leaders joining us include:

Michael Foods, Bimbo Bakeries, Galderma, General Mills, Pinnacle Foods, Hershey’s, Colgate Palmolive, Acosta, Evolution Fresh, Rich Products, Diageo, Nestle Purina, Edgewell, Mondelez, 7-Eleven, Energizer, Mars, Cargill, Starbucks, Kellogg, AB Inbev, Coca-Cola, Deoleo, Kimberly-Clark, RB, P&G, Biscotti Bros. Schnucks Grocery, PepsiCo, and more. View the preliminary agenda here, and register today

POI Research – Strategies for Improving Trade Promotions and Retail Execution
Source: (Mercury News August 25, 2016)

Seek to enable all of your trade promotion related processes. We still see a large number of activities that are done in spreadsheets instead of through a system. Evaluate all of your processes when choosing a TPx solution. Adding spreadsheets to compensate for inadequacies in your system of choice only adds cycle time, complexity, and the possibility for errors. A great Labor Day read…Learn more, and access the research

How Leaders Maintain a Front-line Focus
Source: (HBR September 2016)

These four practices can help you stay in touch with, and focus on, the front line. That’s a powerful differentiator in the world of luxury hotels, of course, which is a high-touch consumer business. But it can help all sorts of companies. Think, for example, of the “Orange Apron Cult” at Home Depot-the empowered associates on the floor who provide advice to customers and are a key component of the company’s success.Learn more

Access the free webinar to review the key insights from the POI 2016 Retail Execution Panorama.View Now

2 Upcoming POI Summits will provide depth around the POI Retail Execution Report, enabling technology, and Analysis, as Manufacturers’, Retailers’, and Distributors’ will gather around the best practices, including September 26-27, and November 2-4 2016. Make plans now, and register today!

Take a look at how a handful of brands-including RTO+P’s work for Morning Star Farms and Reyka Vodka-are using the feature below. Note: To see the zoom feature in action, click on each post from a mobile device, open it in the Instagram app and pinch and zoom across the screen. Learn more

Registration is Open!! POI Fall Summit – Achieving Mutual Growth through Data Centered Collaboration, Dallas TX. Make your plans now, as we are building another world-class agenda, including Meijer, Bimbo Bakeries, Georgia-Pacific, Johnson & Johnson, Plated.com, and more. Learn more

Next Gen Store Execution: Keep Your Store Relevant with Image Recognition
Source: Trax Image Recognition August 2016)Brick-and-mortar retailers are putting an unprecedented premium on delivering customer experience that will drive loyalty and lifetime value. To be relevant to shoppers, retailers need to evolve from using traditional store monitoring methods to a smarter, data-driven process that offers deep actionable insight into operational challenges at the aisle. Learn more

Sobeys Enacts Price Cuts in Western Canada
Source: (Supermarket News Sept. 6, 2016)

Enroll Today and Become Certified as a Collaborative Marketer w/ POI at Saint Joseph’s University
Source: (POI-Next Orientation is December 16-17, 2016)During this 16-week self directed program, expert faculty expose participants to the key management levers that drive organizational success. The program begins by exploring how organizations develop and implement strategy.
Then, core functional areas of business are explored – from sales to marketing, to supply chain and finance -teaching candidates a solid understanding of each function and how it contributes to trading partner collaboration success. Learn more and enroll today

POI designed the Retail Execution Vendor Panorama to help consumer goods companies and their distribution partners execute at the individual store level because if the product is not available, merchandised correctly, and promoted effectively, the consumer will likely purchase from a competitor. In a POI 2015 TPx and Retail Execution Surveyof 75 consumer goods companies of varying sizes, one third of those surveyed said they did not execute at the store level well. Only 20 percent responded that they were executing at the store level well.

Key Insights from the 2016 POI Retail Execution Vendor Panorama and recommendations from the 2016 POI Retail Execution Vendor Panorama
In order to execute effectively, the Panorama has a number of recommendations including:
– Prioritize functionality above delivery method. The lines between SaaS, managed services, hosted private cloud are blurrier that ever. Consumer goods companies’ first decision is whether they will be customizing their solution since that will help determine where the technology will physically reside.
– Prioritize capabilities that will help users to be more effective. The capabilities companies need to prioritize include retail activity optimization, image recognition, guided selling, social selling, gamification, voice recognition, and in-flight analytics. The POI 2015 TPx and Retail Execution Survey found that 80 percent of respondents do not have the sell more capabilities which in turn provides companies who have sell more capabilities a significant competitive advantage.- Recognize that a single solution is not likely to meet global needs. There is just too much disparity in price, suitability to local requirements, and availability of support to be able to do so. POI has found that most global companies utilize three to five solutions.- Don’t neglect the needs of managers and office-based personnel. POI has found that some solutions are quite mature for field users but can have significant limitations for those who have other roles.

– Ask for best practices from your vendor. The POI 2015 survey found a wide disparity between expectations for best practices and what best practices were actually delivered. Make sure to find out the background of the individuals who will be delivering the best practices. Then document the best practices requires and make this part of the scope of work.

Vendor Evaluation for POI Best-In Class

In the 2016 POI Panorama, 21 solutions from 20 vendors were evaluated. Sixteen capabilities from each vendor were analyzed and compared consisting of: company viability, geographic strategy, market responsiveness and track record, deployment capabilities, market understanding, vertical and industry strategy, partner leverage, company vision, product aptness and flexibility, delivery flexibility, solution completeness, offline capabilities, user experience, analytical capabilities, product vision, and configurability. Learn more