Retail News Update

Achieving cost reductions is one thing. Continuously building upon those savings and driving additional performance improvements is another matter. It requires continuous monitoring of the market and supplier performance by experts who know the category and the supply base. Unfortunately, few companies have the resources to apply this level of attention to the majority of their categories. ICG Commerce, on the other hand, addresses this challenge by providing seasoned professionals with deep category experience and proactive category management support that produces incremental savings and performance improvements year after year. 

Category Management: Expert insight and resources to unlock additional savings

By analyzing detailed spend, transactional and pricing data, and continuously monitoring the supply markets, our dedicated category experts routinely identify and implement solutions to further reduce maverick purchasing and drive incremental unit-cost reductions through additional sourcing, appropriate specification changes, substitution, better demand management, and actively target cost-avoidance opportunities in appropriate commodities.

• Price Management -Monitoring of category indices and analytics on impending price changes
• Supply-Market Monitoring and Reporting -Continuous analysis of spend, market data, and benchmarks to identify additional improvement opportunities
• Continuous Cost Improvements -Implementation of additional savings through substitutions, better compliance, or additional sourcing
• Supplier Performance Management -Monitoring supplier performance and driving quality and service improvements

To further improve supplier compliance and performance, our seasoned category managers constantly monitor a number of key metrics and produce quarterly supplier scorecards to ensure your suppliers are performing at the highest level. The scorecards include spend, savings, transaction volume, and quality metrics such as:

• Calculating spend vs. plan (compliance)
• Quantifying realized savings vs. plan
• Tracking electronic transaction (PO, POA, ASN, Invoice, Credit, Return) accuracy and timeliness
• Recording order fill rate, fill-cycle times, and freight-term compliance
• Identifying exceptions by type (damaged, incorrect items, overage)

Managing non-strategic categories, strategically

Category management support from ICG Commerce delivers year-after-year cost improvements to help you maximize savings opportunities across all categories while focusing your internal efforts on larger, more strategic savings initiatives. This support includes:

• Validation and management of pricing in the years after the initial supplier agreement
• Comprehensive spend and savings reporting to identify and address maverick buying
• Identification and implementation of additional savings opportunities such as product substitution and OEM price support
• Operational improvements such as optimizing order size and reducing the number of supplier invoices
• Reduction in time and effort driving supplier performance improvements and resolving supplier issues