Business today is very challenging and getting even more complex, particularly in the perishable food industry. Bottom line results are always paramount with maximizing sales and reducing stales and returns understandably a common focus for companies in the perishable food industry. Companies that are able to improve their stop level orders can have a direct, positive impact on their sales, sales, and returns. Advanced forecasting tools and data can help perishable food industry companies improve their stop-level orders.
There are many considerations today that can make it challenging to get good stop-level orders that maximize sales and minimize stales and returns. Example considerations include:
- large product catalogs with many alternatives
- impact from promotions
- new product introductions
- competition promotions and new product introductions
- changing consumer preferences
- retailer requirements
Advanced forecasting tools and data can help sales organizations assist their sales reps to create better orders that result in higher net sales with fewer stales and returns. These tools and data can provide sales organizations with insights into activities and trends in order to determine the parameters and factors to use to create stop-level suggested orders for sales reps and the related supporting data to display during ordering.
Advanced forecasting tools can be used to create history and forecasting data that can be displayed on sales reps’ mobile computers while they are reviewing and creating stop-level orders. Advanced forecasting-based suggested orders are particularly valuable for newer and lower-performing sales reps that may not have the experience or ability to generate maximum impact orders. Advanced forecasting data can also give experienced, high-performing sales reps the information they need to confirm or tweak their orders.
Harvest Food Solutions has extensive experience with the factors that most impact sales, stales, and returns in the perishable food industry. Harvest offers advanced forecasting software tools that enable companies to improve the orders created by their sales reps. Harvest can also provide guidance on ordering and forecasting tools and approaches.