Product Availability

Product availability is a key measure of both internal and external performance. Customers demand to receive their ordered products on time and in full. For retailers, empty shelves mean lost sales and disgruntled customers. For e-tailers, failure to deliver promises loses a customer forever. In a competitive marketplace, poor availability means that customers will go elsewhere.

Product availability is influenced by several elements, including stock levels throughout the supply chain, reorder algorithms, planning and forecasting, reliability and general management capability.

Crimson & Co has worked with many companies to improve their availability levels, taking both ‘point solution’ views to fix immediate, operation-critical problems and wider, more inclusive perspectives to take into account the effect each element in the supply chain has on each other.

Back Door Operations - "the last 5 yards"

Retailers have become increasingly aware of the disproportionate cost of back door operations within stores. Receiving and unloading vehicles, identifying products, storing products, moving products to the sales floor, unpacking, stacking and returning packaging all represent significant costs to a business. As a result, much of the work traditionally carried out in store is being pushed back to the DC.

We help retailers to identify the back door operation costs and develop business cases for distribution streamlining and the linking of the DCs to the stores. These include the design of new processes and supporting infrastructures, which we then help to implement.

Obsolescence

Obsolescence can be a frustrating drain on the resources of organisations, with a number of industries citing it as contributing to 10-15% of their supply chain costs. Many companies have a strong focus on making accurate provision for it, but focus more of their attention on controlling inventory levels and maintaining availability. Fast, accurate and flexible supply chain planning can enable you to develop systems and tools which help reduce both inventory and obsolescence without impact on availability and customer service.

As part of the planning process, we help our clients develop a clear obsolescence process and policy. This allows not only accurate provision, but visibility, control and reduction of write-off, through to innovative strategies for disposal of obsolete stock.

All too often, across a range of disciplines, the Service Level Agreement (SLA), or similar contract struck with a service provider, is nothing more than a document used to formalise the end of the sourcing process. From a business perspective though, much of the performance and customer service is driven by the delivery of external providers and suppliers.

The ability to rate, rank, differentiate and review your partners can be used in a multitude of ways, from strengthening understanding and relationships to supporting future decision making.

Across supply chain management and procurement disciplines, we use our significant experience in end-to-end service level management, enabling our clients to better control external factors and gain a deeper understanding of the key issues in their supply chain.

The backdrop to e-commerce is changing at a dizzying pace, with developments in mobile commerce, advertising, digital delivery, Web 2.0 and the resulting legislation and its enforcement. Much time and focus has, understandably, been invested in these areas over the last decade. An organisation's ability to take advantage of non-traditional channels can be critical to maintaining market share, driving customer satisfaction and satisfying stakeholders.

Whether you're looking to review and modify your supply chain to take advantage of new channels, or to optimise your strategy to drive the advantage gained from them, we have significant experience in supporting clients in design and delivery of internet and alternative routes to market.