We're starting to see year end results from 2011. Many look promising but others still show struggles. It seems, from  talking with Retailers and Grocers, that they plan to continue implementing the strategies they started mid-2011. As companies continue to look at ways to improve operations to offset lower sales, an area of growing interest is improved partner collaboration. What does that actually mean to collaborate?

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The 1st quarter is now behind us, and as I have suggested over the past several months, companies are indeed looking at productivity efficiencies by adding new partners to their electronic trading program. In addition, they are looking at new types of data from existing partners. Doing this is a great tactic that will move toward the strategy of having visibility and/or controlling costs. However, many are now looking at “what is my true cost and are we charging the correct price to our customer?” Read more...

As retailers continue to squeeze as much as they can out of their supply chain they are continuing to look at having the right product in the right place. To faciliate this, many are looking at working with assortments, musical runs, or prepacks which they will create by region. Two years ago I wrote an article on this topic, but thought it woud be relevant to address the concept again and make sure that if your company is considering supporting multiple skus, sizes, and color products within a caselot or prepack, that you are aware of what others are doing, in order to support a colaboration with your trading partners. Read more...