Fresh Retailer’s dilemma concludes…

Well, you can stop the bleeding only when you know where to apply band-aid. With first step taken by capturing data on where all the category is bleeding, balm can be applied to target areas to bring the shrink down.

In corporations quite often it is not possible to even start the healing process without getting a sign off from bottom to the top. Everyone has to know and acknowledge that they own part of the problem. When you start delving deeper, you will find that department lime Commercial and IT which apparently look remotely linked with Freshness issue, contributes a lot towards shrinkage. (Ask me – I’ll tell you how). Only this way it is possible to crack the issue. Next step would be to nominate someone who is now responsible for freshness or dump/shrink- end to end – period. It is also important that this freshness officer reports to the chief executive and is suitably empowered. It is pertinent to note here that this freshness executive is bound to ruffle many feathers. Organisations which thrive on polticking and back-biting shall ensure that this freshness officer is moved out of scene. So it is important to create safeguards in this regard. The scene now set for implementing and executing the crated agenda and thereafter measure and contol the losses. This approach shall sure work than bringing in cold chain and costly technologies. Good luck fresh produce retailers. You still have a long way to go….      

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2 Responses to “Fresh Retailer’s dilemma concludes…”

  1. Gravatar of ZAHIER ZAHIER
    29. April 2009 at 04:21

    Hi Anil,

    Your writing captures me. One thing i want to hear your views on is what is the best way to do a promotion on fresh produce, is it proce off or percentage free and how do you base your volumes for the promo, please share your thoughts, thanks, zahier

  2. Gravatar of Vishwajeet Vishwajeet
    26. August 2009 at 05:52

    I strongly believe, that the freshness officer can ideally be played by an external consultant. This is because he will be out of the political organization of the company and can bring a fresh perspective to where the symptom lies and where the root cause lies.

    Additionally, the consultant can drive continuous improvement by identifying KRAs at different levels and then the responsibility/performance of the manager being linked with the incentive.

    Thanks,
    Vishwajeet
    B Tech IITK’2005
    AVP (Agribusiness)
    InI Consulting Pvt Ltd

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