Associated Wholesale Grocers, IRI team up on grocery retailer-vendor portal

Associated Wholesale Grocers has partnered with CPG market researcher IRI to launch the AWG Partner Gateway, a data and analytics portal for AWG retail members and their vendors.

Grocery wholesale cooperative AWG and IRI said Tuesday that the AWG Partner Gateway will enable integrated, seamless collaboration between AWG grocers and their CPG manufacturers using IRI Liquid Data technology. The portal will automate and connect the key forms that vendors use to communicate and sell to AWG as well as automate reporting to AWG vendor partners, providing an enterprisewide view, standardized category management and execution analytics, and long-term demand forecasting.

From nine wholesale divisions, Kansas City, Kan.-based AWG serves over 1,100 independent grocery members with more than 3,200 supermarkets in 28 states. AWG’s generates consolidated annual sales of $10.6 billion. The company noted that the AWG Partner Gateway is part of its “Convergence” long-term plan to sharpen the operations of its cooperative retailing organization and deliver top-notch capabilities to member grocers and vendor partners.

“Our members represent more than $23 billion in retail sales, making the collective cooperative the sixth largest supermarket group in the United States,” AWG President and CEO David Smith said in a statement. “Our mission is to provide our member-retailers all of the products, tools and services they need to compete favorably in all markets served. With IRI’s expertise, data access and advanced technology, AWG is empowering our members and vendor partners to leverage data and analytics as strategic differentiators for improved growth and profitability and to further achieve our mission.”

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"Our mission is to provide our member-retailers all of the products, tools and services they need to compete favorably in all markets served." — David Smith, AWG chairman, CEO
 

Plans call for the AWG Partner Gateway to roll out in phases, starting in the second quarter. AWG and IRI said the portal will drive organizational and operational productivity and cut overall collaborative costs-to-serve, as well as provide standardized reports, analytics, forecasts and automated processes based on the cooperative’s “one source of truth” database.

“IRI is thrilled to be bringing a highly customized solution — rooted in advanced technology and our unparalleled data access — to the important independent retailer and wholesaler markets in partnership with AWG,” commented Wei Lin Wong, president of global retail and strategy at Chicago-based IRI. “The AWG Partner Gateway creates a best-in-class program to help AWG provide their vendor partners and members with accurate, real-time and actionable insights driven by the most representative wholesale distributor data available.”

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Phase one of the AWG Partner Gateway will leverage AWG’s order and shipment data to provide the retail cooperative’s merchants and vendors with standardized data, reporting, analytics and insights and to develop create differentiated capabilities in assortment optimization, planning and forecasting, and workflow automation, the companies said. Phase two and thereafter will give AWG members competitive visibility into local markets plus the ability to integrate point-of-sale data for competitive differentiation and additional localization.