Local Discounter, a fast-growing Eastern European supermarket chain, sells various goods from domestic and foreign manufacturers. Today, it successfully operates 54 stores of four formats with an assortment from 2,000 to 15,000 SKUs. The company offers a vast range of items in 38 categories (foodstuffs, alcoholic beverages, household chemicals, goods for children, etc.) to thousands of consumers every day.
Before LEAFIO
Before implementing LEAFIO Inventory Optimization, Local Discounter’s category managers were in charge of supplier relations. The ordering of goods according to delivery schedules was actually done by the managers of each store (i.e., 54 individual employees).
As for merchandising, the company did not have a well-defined business process for product placement. This was also handled by category managers who developed shelves in Excel. The layout was analyzed based on weekly photo reports from managers delivered through a messenger.
It was clear that the company urgently needed to automate and centralize its processes to improve control over inventory management and merchandising processes. The changes could significantly boost key indicators, reduce managers' labor costs for routine tasks, and allow them to pay more attention to upgrading service levels across stores.
Implementation objectives
After a thorough analysis of the software market, Local Discounter picked LEAFIO Inventory Optimization and LEAFIO Shelf Efficiency products and expected them to achieve the following objectives:
Optimize balances to ensure maximum availability with minimum overstock and write-offs;Minimize labor costs for ordering by reducing the number of specialists involved in this process to 2–3 people and eventually fully automate it; Increase the efficiency of promotional campaigns by providing optimal forecasts and timely ordering of promotional goods;Improve stock management indicators (turnover, availability, sales, etc.).Structure store shelf space for its effective utilization (so that each item from the total assortment has its place);Ensure compliance of planograms made in the software with the actual placement of goods in the stores; checking with the help of reallograms;Quick transfer of the updated planograms from the central office to the stores;Optimize the process of product display on the shelves in the network to save time and resources of employees;Automatically create both individual planograms for each sales point and the format ones for clusters of stores.
In a nutshell, the platform's primary purpose is to increase sales by making products more available and laid out correctly.
Automating business processes
Cooperation between Local Discounter specialists and the LEAFIO implementation team was as fruitful as possible, and it was that very cooperation that led to the successful completion of the implementation of LEAFIO Shelf Efficiency. The product has now been integrated with Local Discounter’s accounting system, staff has been trained, and the software has been successfully scaled to the entire chain. In the next phase of the process, the customer success department will support users in working with this product to help maximize the use of the system's capabilities and advise in case of unforeseen situations or updates.
As for the LEAFIO Inventory Optimization module, the work on system integration is already underway, and there is no doubt that this product will also successfully pass through all implementation stages.
We are thrilled that Local Discounter has chosen LEAFIO products to move its business toward the future, and we wish the company speedy and outstanding financial results!
