Executive Outlook: Raising The Bar

By Daniel Becton, President, Planogramming Solutions, Inc.

For many years, the retail community has witnessed the evolution of technology and the role it has played in the merchandising and financial analysis of shelf space. Unfortunately, for most companies, benefits including operational efficiencies, productivity gains and the financial power that can be obtained have lagged far behind due to executive's not realizing the true potential that an effective space management program can provide.

Space management has been around for over 30 years. The evolution of this technology within the past 20 has progressed much more rapidly than most company's expectations. Today, many companies are still just drawing pictures as the term "plan-o-guides" was coined for this purpose and is still being used more as the norm rather than the exception.

Much of the blame for this situation lies in company's leadership not knowing there is much more to be gained beyond the picture and allowing a less than accurate planogram to be delivered to the stores. When this happens, the store's perception of what is expected of them is distorted. They see the flaws as a license to basically do what they want and change the set as they feel. Space allocated to products that are no longer available, fixtures not constructed exactly as they should have, new products sitting in the back room which were not included, all become elements that result in a reset looking nothing like the original schematic. In addition, the frequency of the updated schematic is typically only once or twice a year at best. What is happening at the store in between these infrequent updates? Exactly the same result as before. This process over and over, again and again, ultimately contributes to the store's perception that planograms are not a plan at all but just a general recommendation.