Grocery retail
Lost sales are rarely a stock problem.
Shrink, stockouts, idle inventory and promotions live in different reports. The brain links supplier, order, receipt, stock, shelf and price, and shows where margin actually leaks.
Where money leaks
- Lost sales that reports blame on purchasing, but that happen with the product already in the store.
- Promotions that lift volume and cut margin, with nobody measuring item by item, store by store.
- Shrink booked with no declared cause, impossible to trace to a supplier, store or process.
- Cash tied up in slow movers, mixed with production inputs that never sell.
Where agents work
- Shelf alertWhich items to refill on the sales floor today, store by store.
- Promotion checkWhich items are worth promoting and which ones the discount does not pay for.
- Idle inventoryWhat to transfer, clear out or stop buying.
- Shrink by causeWhich supplier, store or process explains the loss.
What we found
At a Rio de Janeiro supermarket chain, 88.7% of lost sales happened with stock in the store. The problem was on the shelf, not in purchasing.
in production
At the same chain, promotions needed 62% more volume to pay for themselves and delivered 40%.
in production
How it starts here
- Week 1
Sales, stock and receipts connected by store and SKU.
- Week 2
Rules calibrated with operations: what is an input, what is in-store production, what is merchandise.
- Week 3
Alerts validated against store history.
- Week 4
Daily alerts going to stores, with the result tracked.
Other industries
- Brands on marketplacesUnavailable on the marketplace rarely means out of product.
- Consumer goodsThe total is usually right. The error is in which SKU and which region.
- Financial servicesThe portfolio changes every day. Monitoring has to keep up.
- EducationEnrollment, tuition and dropout tell the same story in different systems.
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