NEW ORLEANS -- Retailers and manufacturers continue to search for more productive ways to create sales. Category management is the best way to do it, according to Tom Kees of Nielsen North America.
"The obvious and optimum result is to increase your sales and that comes through higher in-stocks using category management," said Kees, senior vice president of retail channel development for the Efficient Consumer Response division.
He spoke at a breakfast meeting here at the annual convention of the School and Home Office Products Association last month.
Kees stressed that timely, accurate information is critical for category management.
"Category management and taking costs out of the supply chain is being driven by technology," he said. "All of this is being driven by the [point-of-sale] data that is fed into the space management systems so you can do a better job of managing what's going on with the space in stores.
"The other thing you want to do is to reduce expenses and reduce operating costs -- the efficiency part of ECR -- and this is done by feeding POS data into space management systems so you can allocate your inventory properly. This is used by the supply side and the retail side in this setting," he said.
Nielsen, Northbrook, Ill., last year formed an alliance with SHOPA, Dayton, Ohio. The former will provide information services to the manufacturers, distributors and retailers that form SHOPA's 1,000-plus membership.
Kees pointed out the enormous opportunities for home office products in the years ahead. He said that about 30% of the work force today works at home, and that figure will increase to 50% by the year 2000.
