The retail world is now moving more and more towards digitization. The concept of Machine Learning and Big Data Analysis makes the customers’ every move in the store an evaluating point to come up with new and more influencing product and store display strategy. In the retail industry, CPG firms are expected to offer retailers with new insights to maximize store-shelf efficiencies to deliver the consumers the expected shopping experience. Hence, CPG firms should adopt new tools and practices that will not only help them to align with these expectations well but also make them their preferred partners.  

Category management earlier was a concept where the focus ran from sales to shoppers. Now the focus is shopper-centric. This affects the way the CPG firms stir their category management practices and space planning for the retailers. This shift of focus requires the CPG firms to collaborate with the retailers to make merchandising recommendations that are data-driven. CPG firms need to come up with recommendations or store planograms that can leverage every consumer visit to the stores and elevate the sales growth resulting in increased average shopping basket size. The store space planning tool these firms use to build the store planogram recommendations ought to be flexible and easy to understand and use. This tool is used by both the category managers and the sales representatives. That is why the space planning tools should be designed to support both merchandising teams and sales forces and make it possible for them to build store planograms and to make tailored recommendations on them. A planogram software should entail the following features to be compatible with both the teams and become the first choice of CPG firms. 

A Centralized and Easily Shareable Product and Planogram Library 

Without centralized planogram and product library, planogram creation commenced with a completely blank canvas. The sales representatives used to create arrangements at the store manually with the different products in the assortment plan. These are called realogram. These realograms were then shared with the category managers and they used to analyze these and make alterations and share their recommendations in the form of planograms. This process is both time and energy consuming and not compatible with the current advancements in category management practices.  

A store planogram creator that comes with a centralized planogram and product library feature helps save a lot of time in such scenarios. A space planning software with this feature helps the category managers of the CPG firms and the sales representatives to contribute to the retail merchandising activities efficiently and with minimum store visits. This helps save valuable time. Anyone from the teams who wish to make suggestions and have access can easily pitch their recommendations that can be later verified by the other members resulting in streamlined communication between the teams. This library is available on a secured cloud and is accessible by both teams easily online. The managers may customize and alter any planogram template in the library and avoid to start from scratch. 

Build-in User-Friendly Features to Enhance the Store Planogram Creation 

CPG companies look for tools that can empower their team’s decisions and activities. Hence, they look for tools that support their retail merchandising decisions. They want their tool to be easily deployable, easy to set-up and easy to work with to have more efficient and productive space planning recommendations. A planogram software that has features like drag and drop, shelf and section manipulation tools, analysis tools, easy product library management and automated shelf filling according to defined rules to save time make the top of the list. These time-saving features help facilitate merchandising activities considerably.  

Supportive Reports for Better Store Planograms  

As discussed earlier both the merchandising and sales teams of the CPG firms are focused on meeting their clients’ (retailers) requirements. Due to the shift in the category management practices, the efforts that these experts make should not only be centered around the retailers but also around the shoppers and their behavior that these retailers entertain. Supportive analytics reports generation is another set of features that serve this objective. Such reports assist the CPG managers to back their recommendations up while presenting them to retailers. An interface that allows to export data to create such reports so that the representatives are able to deliver a holistic view is the preferred software. The software is required to entail such features so that it allows them to merge their analytical and theoretical approaches and strategies into perfect store planograms.  

Nexgen POG is a cloud-based planogram software that entails all the above mentioned features making planogram creation easy and effortless for the merchandising and sales teams of CPG companies. It offers a secure cloud uploaded product library along with customizable planogram templates to avoid starting from scratch. The interface is extremely user-friendly. It allows us to upload data in bulk and generate supportive reports for analysis. It is an interface that facilitates the steps while building a planogram. Nexgen POG also gives the benefit of easy planogram compliance. It is capable to empower both the sales representatives and category managers while making recommendations. It intends to make the CPG firms the retailer’s first preference. 

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