Ahold USA Partners with Retail Solutions for Vendor Collaboration Program

Ahold USA, Inc., parent company supermarkets Giant Landover, Stop & Shop New England, Stop & Shop New York Metro, Giant Carlisle and online grocery Peapod, has partnered with Retail Solutions Inc. (RSi) to set a new standard for vendor collaboration programs by introducing shared business processes across the enterprise. 

Ahold USA has leveraged RSi's data platform and collaboration tools to better align Ahold USA business goals and daily priorities with its vendor partners, say company officials. This has allowed Ahold USA to improve operational execution, realize new efficiencies and increase product availability. Furthermore, Ahold USA vendor partners, both warehouse and DSD, have recaptured incremental sales and achieved significant cost savings through Ahold USA's revolutionary in-store alerting program and advanced collaborative business analytics.

"With the customer's experience at the center of our success, we recognized the opportunity to create a truly collaborative program where vendors and our retail businesses work together to problem-solve, reach goals and measure the effectiveness of our efforts to create a superior shopping experience for their consumers," says Walt Lentz, senior vice president of planning, replenishment and logistics at Ahold USA.

Ahold USA selected RSi as a preferred partner due to the structured nature of RSi's approach, officials add. This approach uses formal use cases to drive actionable insights through the richness of the data provided by Ahold USA. Ahold USA and its vendor partners are able to make more informed decisions in near-real time and collaborate on vital business needs with this new Vendor Collaboration Program. These areas of action include reduced distribution voids, improved on-shelf availability, faster speed to shelf for product introductions, reduced unsaleables and improved promotional execution. Ahold USA and RSi have taken their collaboration program to a new level by incorporating daily downstream data turned into powerful alerting and analytic capabilities so that vendors can better execute against a single, shared version of the truth. 

"Ahold USA is changing the way retailers view, share and derive value from their data. They are utilizing RSi to take their vendor relationships and business planning to a new level of efficiency and effectiveness," says Jonathan Golovin, CEO of RSi. "The results they are achieving across their evolving program are a clear indication of its success and future potential. Our alerts and real-time reporting capabilities make true collaboration possible with the benefit sustainable and measurable for both supplier and retailer."

A key driver of the Vendor Collaboration Program is the in-store alerting program which enables Ahold USA's businesses to deliver on-shelf availability alerts to their store associates each morning, officials say. More than three million such alerts have been resolved since program inception. This has helped to identify and solve root causes of out-of-stocks and streamline in-store operations.

Additional key elements of the Ahold USA Vendor Collaboration Program: