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A lot of work goes into getting a brand’s product onto a grocery store shelf, especially in planning and execution. Technology plays a powerful role, providing brands with the ability to scale efficiently from forecasting and managing promotions to measuring the effectiveness of those promotions after the fact. We wanted to showcase a friend of ours in the space of retail software space, Repsly.  

Repsly is a leading provider of Retail Execution software. Their platform provides merchandising, field sales, and promotion execution solutions that help consumer goods brand and broker field teams improve performance while reducing costs.  

If you’re a consumer goods brand having a plan is critical and involves aligning resources before being put into motion. It is also critical to review that plan and optimize throughout the year. The insight on how that plan is being executed for trade promotion is where retail execution comes into play. Essentially, UpClear’s Blueplanner focuses on the planning and optimization of promotions (what happens before the product is in the store). Repsly’s software focuses on performance measurement and ensuring  promotions are being executed (what happens in the store). 

It’s important to have a great plan, make sure things are going smoothly, and if not, have the ability to take action and make necessary adjustments. To truly optimize your sales, you need systems for both (TPM & Retail Execution).  

About Retail Execution Software 

Who uses RetEx software?  

Retail execution software is for field sales and merchandising teams that are responsible for executing in-store promotions, improving product availability, growing shelf share, placing orders, and other retail execution activities at key retail accounts where their products are sold.  

What problems does RetEx software solve?  

Retail execution software is tailored to help field teams solve specific business problems that relate to both their products’ performance at retail and their effectiveness at covering, supporting, and winning in their territories. 

Merchandising

• Identify and correct on-shelf-availability issues like out of stocks faster.
• Gather accurate data about shelf conditions and monitor planogram compliance at scale.

Promotion / Project Execution

• Schedule work for your field team, track completion, and confirm quality.
• Visually confirm promotion compliance & monitor shelf-level data at scale. 
• Share promotion or project execution data with retail or brand partners.

Field Sales

• Find and prioritize underperforming stores, answering the question: which stores should I visit today? 
• Streamline order entry from the field.

Workforce Management

• Track the skills and attributes of your team in the field.
•  Evaluate your talent pool and assess project readiness.  

Retail Execution Platforms vs Other Enterprise Systems 

A retail execution platform is best used alongside other common enterprise systems, not instead of them. In many cases it may make sense to connect your retail execution platform to your Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP),  Trade Promotion Management (TPM) solutions, either directly or via a central data lake or warehouse. 

As an example, this is how a retail execution platform can fit into your larger technology strategy.  

 
A retail execution platform provides location-based metrics on product and team performance, as well as field team management workflows which results in improved efficiency and program execution effectiveness.  

For field teams, RetEx systems are best for answering location-based questions:  

• Where should my field team go to improve execution today?  
• What is our average compliance vs planogram in this retailer? 
• Where might we be out of stock?  

• What products need to be ordered for replenishment at this store? 
• What promotions or projects need to be executed today?  
• Do I have the talent pool required to execute this project in the field? 

Why Repsly and UpClear are friends 

If we were people, we’d probably be more like cousins than friends.  The work we do is very related.  In the business process construct, the planning and HQ negotiation activities facilitated with TPM precede and inform the Retail Execution (RE) tasks executed by merchandisers and managed in Repsly.  And the data captured with RE can be part of the same post-event analysis supported by TPO.  While TPM and TPO generally focus on the total customer, RE data adds another layer of depth that helps you understand the store-level factors that influenced promotion results. 

If you would like to learn more about Repsly’s retail execution platform, visit their blog at repsly.com/blog.