When it comes to tracking promotions, data overload is real — and may be skewing your perception of your SKUs. In this blog, the team at Crisp shares the best reports to pull on a daily, weekly or monthly basis to keep shelves stocked and promotions on-target.

Here are our recommendations for a data calendar that can help you prioritize what to track.

Daily

Inventory – When you have products moving across the country to multiple DCs and stores, it can be difficult to keep tabs on where your stock ends up — and if it is being sold with success. With inventory and distribution reports, your team can track which products are in stock and where, often on a daily basis.
Checking your inventory daily can determine which DCs are over or understocked, allowing you to work with your brokers and buyers to proactively replenish supply as needed.

Case study: Click here to read how NotCo uses daily Inventory Reports to work with distributors and avoid critical out-of-stock issues for their plant-powered products.

Weekly

Save short blocks in your week to prepare sales reports, assess merchandising efforts, further review inventory, forecast and more.

Monday

Recap – Grab a cup of coffee and take some time to recap the prior week’s performance. Review sales reports, measure the effectiveness of merchandising efforts, and ensure all is well with distribution by tracking movement through the supply chain.

Share – There is no better way to start the week than by sharing snippets of success in sales, or by painting a picture of performance, to prepare your team for the week ahead. You can share custom, granular sales reports with your team.

Identify Voids – Tracking voids allows you to identify where products should be selling, but are not. By checking into voids every Monday, you can prepare to solve for the discrepancies with your distributor and retail partners during the week.

Case study: Last year, SunButter estimates they saved over $250,000 using a voids dashboard to detect and resolve out-of-stocks.

Midweek

Review At-Risk Inventory – Using a Spoilage Risk Dashboard for UNFI suppliers that details how much product – by individual SKU – is at risk in each distribution center by displaying weeks of supply on hand.

By checking your perishable inventory every week, you can identify out-of-stocks and ensure that fresh food is being delivered to locations where it will quickly be sold with success – rather than shipping to stores where it will be overstocked and go to waste. We encourage our customers to make the most of these features, as it not only benefits communities as a whole, but will help to increase profits.

Friday

Compare – Happy Friday! Before wrapping up the week, we recommend comparing your distributor shipments with retailer shipments. With this holistic view, your team may better identify not only what is in stock or being shipped from distribution centers, but to which stores and retailers. You may even identify the new stores carrying your products that week.

Case study: Read about how Rebel Green keeps regular tabs on their accounts to serve customers and win long-term business.

Review – Take a bit of time before heading into the weekend to review the latest week’s trends in sales and velocity. What insights can your team gather about performance? Enjoy a glance at your wins for the week, and identify areas that you can work on after some rest and recuperation.

Monthly

At the end of the month, these reports will give an overview of your efforts and performance.

Bi-Monthly

Track Effectiveness of Promotions: Twice a month is an ideal frequency for tracking the effectiveness of your promotions. To measure how and if your trade dollars are being spent with success, simply correlate sales and velocity reports to set promotional periods.

Looking to have an extra edge, with more campaign and in-store demo tracking capabilities?
Crisp has partnered with Promomash to offer an integration that feeds daily sales, shipment and other customer data directly into the Promomash portal. With Promomash, you can plan, staff, execute and track promotions or field marketing campaigns to better scale your efforts across the country.

End of Month

Review YoY Sales, Velocity and Distribution – Preparing for board meetings, buyer presentations, and company reports can be made much less stressful when you have access to clear, concise sales data that demonstrates success and progress.

By pulling YoY Sales, Velocity and Distribution reports at the end of each month, you will have compelling data to show how products are selling and where; how much waste you are reducing; and transparency about how distributors are working to move your inventory. This will also help inform discussions about new product launches, reduction of SKUs, or where to focus your expansion efforts for the next month.

Case study: With over 100 products, Katz Gluten Free uses data to inform marketing, product assortments, and product innovation.

Develop Reports for Sales Teams and Brokers – Sharing reports with the team will help you track progress, proactively set priorities for brokers, and compensate them based on performance. Doing this once a month will drive continued momentum for all parties involved!

As-Needed

Manage New and Old Products – After discontinuing SKUs and going to market with new products, you can track the sell-down of your old stock and the rollout of the new items. Going to market with new products involves a level of risk and expense, so the more often you use data to track sales and inventory, the more you can ensure a successful launch.

Build a Data-Driven Sales Story – By including proven data into your retail buyer meetings, internal discussions, or investor presentations, data can give you a valuable edge to grow your business with demonstrated success.

Samantha (Sam for short) Schend, VP of Sales at Crisp, has led sales organizations for over nine years in the retail and healthcare industries, where she developed and grew sales teams, secured major partnerships, and accelerated revenue growth. Prior to Crisp, Samantha was the Regional Manager at Inmar, a pharmaceutical reverse logistics and solutions provider.