Leadership Perspectives

Tony Mezzatesta is Director Retail Operations, North American McCormick Teams, for Advantage Solutions. Advantage Solutions leverages StayinFront technology to drive smarter, faster, and more flexible growth. StayinFront’s solutions are integrated into Advantage Solutions’ retail ways of working, allowing them to identify and harness efficiencies, insights, and influence.

1) Retailer replenishment models are getting better but will never become perfect.  Maintaining ideal conditions at the store level will optimize sell-through and ensure replenishment models trigger this level of sales. Ultimately, three things must be done VERY well – optimizing the shelf, activating promotions on day one, and ensuring adequate inventory to fully leverage both the shelf and the promoted volume.

2) Store level conditions are constantly changing. This affects what must be done in a retail visit. Commercial priorities change with each cycle. Shelf resets happen one or two times a year. Store managers change. Store renovations typically cause disruption before they stabilize. Labor shortages can impact some stores more than others, and this, too, can change. Left unattended, store level conditions will slowly erode, feeding replenishment models with lower sales relative to competitor products. Combine this with tight budgets, and we must squeeze every bit of growth out of every call and move on. Store level coverage is essential to growth, but rigid coverage models and call mandates are no longer good enough.

3) Data and technology are changing how we drive growth in retail. There’s no shortage of technology innovation, but the challenge here is how technology can drive growth in retail. The answer lies in how we focus solutions on the most compelling opportunities and fully integrate the solutions into new ways of working with retail and how we measure success.

We are using technology to drive smarter, faster, flexible growth. We need to identify which stores will benefit the most from our retail reps, send them there efficiently, inform them of what to do when they get there, and provide them with the information they need to drive growth. Let me add that this is a journey toward the future of retail. We are inventing the leading edge as we go – and it’s not a stroll in the park! Integrating solutions into how we work is as important as the technology itself.

Good question. It’s not easy, and we always find challenges that need to be solved. I think some underlying factors do enable success, though. The first one that comes to mind is that we approach activation as a deep learning exercise where we align the technology solution to the retail challenge, knowing we will have to fine-tune it as we go. Secondly, we make sure the solution works in harmony with our ways of working. Often, that must change, and we listen to and work closely with our retail reps.

I’d describe it as essential. The rules of winning in retail are changing, driven by data and technology, and that’s why it is essential. Data can inform what’s going on at the store level before you get there. Technology can improve audit efficiency, capture more data, and provide better insights at the store level. Analytics can tie things together to identify what distinguishes top-growth and bottom-growth stores. Data and technology are leading us to new ways of measuring success and the ability to unpack retail contribution to growth. This is the future of retail, and data and technology are essential pillars of successful retail coverage.