Observations

• Immediate and direct impact on consumer and shopper's satisfaction, yielding increased sales and market share for trading partners
• Can lead to dramatic changes in the way companies work together to serve shoppers and consumers more effectively
• Many efforts in the past resulted in good plans, but failed to deliver bottom line results or long term relationship, with too much talk and too little action
• Thus, it can be difficult to get started but when approached correctly, delivers big benefits to both companies

Typical Priorities

• Demand Pilots: The best way to tailor ECR concepts to the specific needs and capabilities of the two trading partners - you can't experience working together if you don't start!
• Assortment Rationalisation: for many companies focus in this area often leads to big improvements in consumer satisfaction and business results. Optimising assortments focuses on eliminating poorly performing SKUs and improving the location of others.
• Optimising Promotions: Joint efforts frequently improve promotion effectiveness, including process efficiency and reduced response times. The emphasis is placed on defining promotion objectives, internal and external communication, timely distribution and placement of promotions and regular evaluation.
• New product introduction: often the most difficult area for "working together" efforts - but big wins happen to both, when barriers are overcome. The emphasis is on screening products against critical success factors early in the development process. Effort is also placed on reducing process complexity and time and cost to market.

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