Why Planograms are Just the Beginning
By Chris Loxley, Vice President, Sales
If a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound? If a planogram is created by a space planner, but not properly communicated or executed, does it have an impact?
While the first question may be up for philosophical debate, I can answer the second with an absolute, definitive “no.”
As every retailer knows, planograms drive sales. No matter your company’s size or whether you sell groceries, clothing, health and beauty, sporting goods, or greeting cards, planograms enable you and your entire team to improve the shopping experience and maximize retail store space.
And, perhaps more importantly, well-communicated planograms ensure that merchandisers’ extremely well-thought-out vision actually makes it to store shelves. Only then can you and your team get more granular with shelf-level analysis and thus deliver the bottom-line results your company expects.
What is a Planogram?
First, let’s define planograms, or what we affectionately call POGs. Planograms are a representation of how the consumer should see the aisle during their shopping experience. Merchandisers spend a lot of time creating planograms to optimize category sales in-store. But it’s all in the store’s hands to execute it.
For more information, see our post on What is a Planogram?
Fix Resets to Drive More Sales
Even the best planograms can’t deliver the results you expect if they’re not executed properly—or at all. Reasons for this lack of proper execution include everything from poor communication and inadequate staffing to poor training, from employee turnover to labor shortages, from bad data to delayed shipments.
Creating the planograms and optimizing for sales or other metrics is a key first step – but if those planograms aren’t communicated to the RIGHT store at the RIGHT time, with the RIGHT additional instructions, images, or other visuals to empower the store teams that are making the physical change, the whole process falls down.
Instead, empower your store teams with the data and tools they need to understand your vision, provide feedback as necessary, and execute on their store-specific planogram quickly and effectively. Communication is the key!
Communication Delivers Compliant Resets
Successful resets rely on a number of things all coming together at the same time. And, it all hinges on good communication. The individual doing the reset must not only have the correct planogram, but they also need the right fixtures, space, and signage to make it all come together. If everything isn’t ready and available to them, store associates will need to make adaptations. These actions may not align with the goals of the planogram.
But thanks to MerchLogix Planogram and MerchLogix Project, it doesn’t have to be this way.
You don’t have to settle for one-size-fits-all as our planogram software enables you and your team members across the country to quickly and cost-effectively create and set store-specific planograms that account for everything from department and shelf size to lighting, fixtures and product assortment.
Seeing is Believing: Photo Auditing
MerchLogix also makes it easy to verify that stores have correctly set their planograms with real-time photo auditing. Team members can share photos of store shelves and special displays so other team members, managers, merchandisers, and vendors all know exactly how their resets look.
It’s true how they say one picture is worth a thousand words! Or, perhaps a thousand emails checking on a reset’s completion status.
Better Planogram Software = Better Results
The results speak for themselves: truly compliant, properly configured, store-specific displays that deliver:
- More sales per square foot
- Better use of store space
- Increased profitability
- Speedier in-store order fulfillment
- Greater consistency in brand standards
- Faster and more accurate resets
As a result, gone are the days of trying to force products where they don’t fit or onto fixtures that can’t be found. Instead, MerchLogix Planogram gives you and your entire team accurate store-specific data you can use for precision planning, quick pivots, and bottom-line results.
To learn more, contact us to talk about how better communication can boost planogram performance.