Retail is frequently described as a business that responds to change. Today's retailer is faced with a rapidly changing and demanding consumer, intense competition, and pressures on costs. The current business environment, combined with technological advances, has created an opportunity for the development of new management approaches. Category management is one such approach. A "category" is any group of similar items that a company wishes to purchase as part of a single transaction. The practise of grouping similar items into a single category or business unit and then focusing procurement, merchandising, sales and other retail efforts on the category is known as category management. The basic concept behind category management is to define the benefits of the category for the consumer while eliminating inefficiencies and unprofitable competition among various brands and suppliers.

Steps in the Category Management Process

• Recognizing the categories: Based on your customer's behaviour, determine the category's parameters. How do they move across categories? This will help in the selection of products, market segmentation, and other areas.
• Analyze the Category Role: How does a certain category fit within the company's wider range of offerings? What is the overall significance and impact of this? You can consider this from both a sales and a volume perspective.
• Monitor Performance: Look at how the category performs in relation to many variables, such as the retailer, the market, other categories, etc. For the subsequent steps, this strategy will offer balanced data.
• Establish goals: Well-defined goals are very important for achieving any objectives. Your marketing plan is no different. Set the benchmarks and targets for the category's KPIs. Sales, volume, market share, and selection are all excellent places to start.
• Strategy development: Think about your company's marketing plans and how the category will be portrayed in stores. It would be best if you continued to focus on improving market share, sales, and foot traffic.
• Implementation: After choosing your strategy, your team needs a detailed plan. Create a plan that outlines your methods, category roles, strategies, and goals.
• Review: Review is a continuous process, not a one-time event. It is intended to be a continuous cycle in which you analyse and improve your process. As you go back through the processes, measure your results and make any necessary changes to the process.

Tools for Category Management - Planogram

Effective category management processes rely on various retail industry tools and resources. Professionals must be aware of what is going on in the store. As a result, they require reliable, real-time retail data on their product categories. Data on out-of-stocks, facings, days of supply and other topics can be included. A planogram is one such tool that assist retailers in this regard. A planogram is a schematic tool used to plan the layout of a retail store. Also known as POGs, they serve as a blueprint for visual merchandising and product displays, as well as inventory management. Planograms assist retailers in gathering data that inspires better design, display, and merchandising decisions to increase in-store sales. Planograms are used by both retailers and suppliers to show how products should be displayed. Using planograms in your retail space is a cost-effective and revenue-generating investment that will benefit your business in the long run. Some businesses may choose to create planograms in-house, whereas others may hire an external planogram service provider to create highly functional and intuitive retail space planograms for them. Planogram service providers will help you manage your data and goals in order to succeed in your retail space. Hiring a planogramming expert also helps to eliminate common planogram execution issues.

Overview of Nexgen Planogram Services

Nexgen offers store-specific planograms for clients that optimize sales and achieve category objectives. We create customized planograms for your business to ensure that these are better aligned with your goals and merchandising strategies. Our expertise in planogram automation helps us build planograms faster, better and consistently. Whether it is creating a planogram from scratch, or a typical reset, we have the knowledge, tools, and experience to get the job done for you.

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