What is a Range Review?
In effect, a Range Review is a meeting, or series of meetings, to analyse the effects of recent range implementations. These take place between representatives of the supplier and the retailer to improve overall performance.
Typically, these meetings will consist of the retailer asking certain key questions of the supplier.
Key Questions(Range Review)
- What has happened to performance after implementation of the range review?
- What can we learn from the changes we made as a result of the last Range Review?
- How can we capitalise on these learnings to drive greater performance in the future?Is the data showing us certain outperforming product groupings or sectors?
- Are low sugar alternatives outperforming the rest of the category?
- Is there a certain flavour that is performing particularly well?
- Where are we achieving a good Rate of Sale and where would an increased distribution increase sales further?
All these questions serve to meet one main end: where can sales be boosted? However, naturally the suppliers are aiming for that shelf space to be as full as possible with their own products. The aim for the retailers is making the most efficient use of their shelf space to drive the most sales.
This may all sound relatively straightforward. However, the breadth and depth of analysis required to answer all these questions is complex.
In particular, slicing and dicing the data is incredibly difficult considering the relatively small number of true data experts at the disposal of FMCGs.
Where does Interrodata come in?
One of Interrodata’s founding principles was to remove this unnecessary barrier from receiving actionable insights. It commonly takes 2-3 days to answer each question, and questions that arise in Range Reviews are no different.
In 2020, in collaboration with Coca-Cola European Partners we set out to address this issue. During workshops with their Category Development team, we heard about some of their frustrations with the current Range Review process.
The main theme we heard was that there was a desire to always look forward, to recommend and to advise. However, the CCEP team were at capacity merely delivering the ‘what’s happened’ in response to retailer questions.
Together we developed the Range Review Impact Assessment tool. This allowed them to run the analyses on past range reviews in minutes rather than days.
The Range Review Impact Assessment Tool (RRIA)
This tool aimed to deliver compelling stories that span the entire ranging process. As such each story is split into 5 major components. These can be used separately to ‘deep dive’ or together to provide the overall picture.
What’s in a RRIA report?
As with all stories it is important to provide context. We lay out what was happening before the review so you can contextualise all the changes in performance displayed in the story.
Then we dive into the impact of the review and what the specific drivers of change were. This allows you to give a quick high-level summary to the customer or your team.
Finally, we deep dive into things such as category, brand, and pack type. This gives you insights down to a granular level to allow you to make holistically informed recommendations. We also compare everything to the broader market, so you can show why providing your competitors with more shelf space would be detrimental to sales figures.
How it could help you
Having the ability to quickly determine the outcome of a range review has various different benefits;
Time
Most roles could do with an few extra hours in the day. Having a story ready to go without having to run any manual analysis gives you the time to focus on the aspects of your role that get you up in the morning.
Speed to the customer
The ability to be first to the customer is crucial in the battle for shelf space. Doing so allows you to lead the strategy alongside the retailer through providing actionable advice and recommendations. Naturally, this allows you to increase sales of your brands from the retailers’ shelf space.
Breadth and Depth of analysis
Humans have a limited capacity for how much analysis they can run. The RRIA tool can run thousands of different iterations of analysis (both high level and granular) at the same time. This allows your recommendations to the customer to be based off a vast breadth and depth of data that spans across multiple data sources.
What is the future for the Range Review?
We may be a bit biased, but we believe the future of Insights lies in Automation and AI. In the very near future, the RRIA will be able to provide its own recommended actions. This would remove yet another barrier of human intervention currently required in this process. Furthermore, there is the option to synchronise the analysis with your ranging schedule, so these reports are sent straight to your inbox ahead of that crucial meeting.
If you would like to learn more about how the RRIA could benefit your business, please get in touch!