Alcoretail Group is the largest specialized retailer of wine and spirits in Georgia. The company includes the “Alcorium” and “Whisky House” store chains, and since 2019, the company has managed imported and strong alcohol in the “Goodwill” store chain. Up to 4,000 unique SKUs are available in the assortment of retail outlets.
How were planograms managed before LEAFIO’s implementation?
Working with planograms at the Alcoretail Group company used to require considerable effort. Employees physically spent a lot of time creating planograms in Excel, sending them, and monitoring their execution. Analyzing the impact of product placement on sales was also a challenge, as it required a different methodology that needed a lot of time and expertise to develop.
The implementation process of LEAFIO Shelf Efficiency
After identifying the challenges, Alcoretail Group decided to find a solution for merchandising management. After evaluating various options, the company chose the LEAFIO cloud solution.
The LEAFIO implementation process lasted 3 months.
- At the beginning of the project, it was necessary to collect the dimensions of goods and sales equipment for a quick launch. At the same time,the adjustment of data integration with the enterprise’s resource planning system (ERP) took place.
- In the 2nd phase, the LEAFIO team trained Alcoretail Group employees on how to work with all aspects of the planograms.
- And at the 3rd stage, before connecting the store to the system, the LEAFIO team and Alcoretail Group dived into deep analytics of planograms and a mobile application for store employees. It allowed store employees to facilitate the work in stores and send photos of the final display of goods to the head office for control and possible corrections.
As a result of this work, planograms for the entire store were created. It was enough to cover almost all the system features and see it in action.
Achievements and changes after the implementation
Because all chain data was stored in Excel, the team was able to draw the necessary planograms quickly: the data from the tables was transferred to LEAFIO Shelf Efficiency and continued the optimization of the layout already in the cloud.
Alcoretail Group is constantly expanding, so new stores are drawn immediately with the tools of the solution.
Today, the Alcoretail team talks about significant process improvements as a result of the system, namely:
All merchandising tasks for store employees are conveniently collected in the mobile application, and a photo of the final display is sent immediately to the head office via the app. So the image of the shelf is constantly monitored, and the manager can quickly make changes if necessary. In addition, employees do not need to print numerous sheets with planograms.
“Initially, we wanted to implement a system to save time for strategic tasks. But as a result, we got much more than that: this is a qualitatively new approach to shelf management and an opportunity to see blind spots in our merchandising.
If you’re looking for a shelf management solution, choose LEAFIO. You will get insights that will transform your shelf management for the better.” – Mzia Milorava, Alcoretail Group
As a result, the use of the solution has structured the business process of merchandising management itself. Now the “creating a planogram - its implementation - analysis” procedure is entirely digitized. Therefore, people are less likely to deviate from the business process, and the effects of changes can be analyzed.
In the future, the company will use LEAFIO to scale planograms within the store chains. The Customer Success team already supports this challenge with their experience and industry insights.
Also, in the long term, the company sees that analytics should become a catalyst for making effective business decisions.
