CIM - Customer Investment Maximiser

Meridian has developed an exciting and innovative new product offer to improve the targeting and return on customer facing investments. We have developed a capability to blend both hard and soft data from a variety of sources (including retailer extranet data such as Retail Link, TIE, SID and Connect) to create an econometric model which directs customer investments to the specific outlets which will deliver the maximum ROI for the brand owner.

Our simple proposition;
We are NOT a field marketing agency. We are field sales ROI specialists; we understand the issues surrounding store level compliance. Our expertise we will help you to:

• Understand the ROI from your current Field Sales investments (Grocery, wholesale/C&C, impulse, convenience)
• Understand, quantify and focus future effort on added value activity and cease activity where there is no effect
• Align capability of the execution methodology to the prioritised sales driving activities – specify the competencies necessary to perform the task!
• Test this insight (revenue impact and durability)
• Develop an ROI Model that:
  • Targets investment to opportunity dynamically (Where, what, how)
  • Measures compliance to call plan
  • Measures ROI by retailer, outlet, brand, sku and individual
    

This could add 3-5% revenue and could result in a decrease or re-allocation of expenditure on customer facing investments.

CIM can work for any category, supplier, channel or sector. Originally developed from our work with clients supplying the multiple grocers, the application is as relevant to other channels & retailer types.

We can add value regardless of your field strategy;

• Blanket or tactical field coverage
• In house or third party provider
• Sales and/or merchandising
• Shared or dedicated resource
• One or more retailers / brands

We can even help you if you make no outlet calls because CIM can calculate whether calling is likely to be justified and which stores you should be visiting - or whether your current strategy is the right one!

There is only one proviso; you must have access to store level sales data such as that provided via Asda Retail Link, Tesco TIE, Sainsbury’s SID or Waitrose Connect. Our experience is that only a minority of suppliers use store level EPoS data partly due to availability but often because they lack the resources to analyse this level of data. Many suppliers find it particularly difficult to maximize value from Retail Link despite the fact that it arguably provides the best level of detail. We can show you how! Our experience is that only by analyzing data at this level of detail can suppliers really begin to target their sales resources effectively.

Challenge for Brand Owners – How do you measure up?

Resolving issues of availability, promotional compliance and planogram execution at store level can deliver a ‘big win’ for brand owners, but in an environment where only a minority of stores need “fixing”, suppliers need to identify where, when & how to apply their field resources to assure an acceptable ROI.

In addition certain sales driving decisions can still be taken at store level, and to further complicate matters, there are significant variations across retailers and even store types within a fascia.

Many major brand owners make significant investments both in outlet calling & POP, but so far only a handful of leading edge companies have developed a reliable way of calculating & measuring sales force ROI on an ongoing basis.

Our approach to improving the ROI of sales force deployment poses some key questions & challenges for brand owners:

• How do you measure the ROI of each sales or merchandising call?
• What is the ROI (cost v revenue impact) of each sales driving action taken during a sales or merchandising call?
• Do you know which stores are more / less likely to be non-compliant to central agreements?
• Do you know which stores in each major account offer the greatest / least revenue uplift potential for a sales call?
• Does your call file reflect this variable uplift potential?
• How do you measure opportunity by individual sales driver (Distribution, Availability, Visibility, Promotion)?

When these challenges are evaluated in detail it becomes clear that the operational environment is complex and ever changing, so we need a tool to simplify the picture & highlight the priority opportunities.

This means that we need to be able to:

• Combine sales activity data with EPOS data from Retail Lik, TIE, SID, Connect etc to analyse sales call impact
  • By retailer, by brand, by sku
  • By sales driver DAVP (Distribution, Availability, Visibility, Promotions)
• Include SKU level margin data
• Understand what can be influenced at outlet level and what requires Head Office intervention
• Isolate the specific sales driving impact of different initiatives (facings, secondary displays, planogram compliance etc)
• Build in consumer, shopper & customer insights
• Factor in retailer agreements, planograms, promotional agreements
• Add costs of field coverage, internal & 3rd party
  

…and recognise that every category has different dynamics, every brand is unique, & retailers’ policies on what can be agreed at local outlet level are constantly evolving!

The answer – join up the data and continuously monitor sales driver impacts;
The Meridian approach comprises 3 modules:

• Understand the current ROI with a rigorous Analysis Module to guide clients through the mass of available data to genuine insight
  • Review what we know today
  • Verify with data from other sources
  • Identify the ‘mission critical’ gaps
  • Test the hypotheses behind the gaps
• Calculate the Size of Prize with an Econometric Model that constantly analyses outlet level ‘cause-effect’ data, PLUS Target activities to direct resources to the greatest potential wins, indicating priority actions to be taken
• Performance Management with Ongoing support service from Meridian to continuously monitor priority retailers & outlets for which offer the greatest short term sales potential

Click here to view a process overview

Click here to download a PDF explaining how the Meridian approach works

Click here to complete a benchmarking questionnaire to see if our approach would help – if you score less than 75% it is probably worth talking to a consultant!

To find out how we could be helping improve the return on your sales investment call Ron Temperley or Carl Davies now on 0207 849 6030 or email us or click here to Request a meeting.