Andy Keenan, Advantage Solutions’ executive vice president, retail services, and Geoff Tanner, chief commercial and marketing officer for consumer packaged goods leader The J.M. Smucker Co., shared their experiences as the two companies have partnered to maximize the impact and return of retail services during “Transformative Retail Merchandising: Growing Sales Through Data-Driven Innovation,” a Progressive Grocer webinar hosted by Editor-in-Chief Gina Acosta.
During the hourlong session, which included a Q&A, Keenan and Tanner discussed:
- How a real-life test of data-driven, customized retail services measured The J.M. Smucker Co.’s true return on its investment in retail services.
- How cutting-edge technology, data and insights can enable highly customized, flexible retail execution to optimize results.
- How meticulous in-store execution can deliver the greatest sales impact.
- How to deploy resources to improve daily in-store conditions.
“As part of our overhaul of our commercial execution model, we identified an opportunity with Advantage to think differently,” Tanner said. “We asked ourselves, what if we power execution with next-level thinking on analytics? Surely if we do this better than we have in the past, we should see significant improvement. And if we start doing this better than our competitors, this could turn into a real strategic advantage for us. And that was probably the biggest shift that we made as a company — how to think differently about retail.”
That shift has paid off for Smucker, Tanner added, noting the company has calculated the new model has delivered $90 million in incremental sales.
“Together, Advantage and The J.M. Smucker Co. are working to reinvent retail execution,” Keenan said. “We are continuing to innovate retail services through the use of industry-leading technology and insightful data, bringing our partnership to even higher levels of in-store execution and sales impact.”