Wow your retail partners with a collaborative data approach

Retailers today need proactive partners – suppliers who initiate strategic conversations backed by solid, indisputable data.

What does a retailer really want from a supplier? A steady stream of high-quality, consumer-pleasing, and profitable products is a good start. Accurate and on-time deliveries and compliance with EDI requirements will help, too.

But simply checking all the boxes will only get you so far. To grow your retail relationships and unlock new opportunities, you need to go above and beyond your competitors. Make yourself an essential collaborator that brings added value to the partnership.

Joint business planning (JBP) is when suppliers and retailers build winning relationships by improving the shopper experience through clear insights and recognition of mutual interests. It’s one example of collaborative commerce, made possible by shared data insights that enhance analytical purview.

A collaborative commerce platform like Crisp empowers suppliers to harness a flow of retail data from all their key accounts, revealing sales intelligence, trends, and opportunities. This approach fuels productive planning discussions with buyers, uncovers mutual benefits, and optimizes revenue in innovative ways.

Ready to boost your wow factor with retail partners? Here are five ways a collaborative, data-driven strategy can set you apart:

1. You’re buttoned up with clean reporting

Clean reporting and accurate data are fundamental to effective collaboration and establishing trust between supplier and partner. Efficiency in data management is crucial and accuracy is paramount. By automating a feed of clean, structured retail data from your partners into a platform or BI tool, you can ensure a reliable flow of accessible, useable, and timely information.

Using a purpose-built cloud-based platform makes this a lighter lift and eliminates the many hidden costs of building an in-house solution, including system maintenance.

2. You deliver on your timelines, quantities, and promises

A robust retail data strategy enhances a supplier’s ability to perform against fundamental KPIs like on-time delivery and fill rate. 

With the right data visibility, suppliers can reduce out-of-stocks by leveraging real-time DC and store-level information to implement more effective stock management strategies. This approach reduces nil-picks, voids, and other supply issues, maintaining a consistent product supply to meet demand.

Data-equipped suppliers can also help keep a retailer’s online channels running smoothly, optimizing transactability to ensure products can be purchased and processed through the website – for pick-up or delivery, for example — without issues.

3. You drive profitability through velocity and fewer markdowns

Optimizing your product’s weekly sales velocity is an ideal way to initiate conversations about expansion. Velocity metrics often convince retail buyers to add products to their assortments, with some having minimum velocity requirements.

A holistic view of daily retail data can help you find levers for velocity across different banners and geographies, allowing you to increase velocity where it lags and capitalize on opportunities where it’s high.

Store-level data can help optimize supply chains to reduce markdowns and outright waste that eat into margins and harm brand value. For instance, ZURU Group significantly reduced retail markdowns by using Crisp to consistently allocate the right product amount to each store, cutting potential markdowns by 50% YOY at their largest retailer.

“Our buyers tell us that no other brands are bringing data to the table like we are,” said Franz Oliveira, Global Director of Sales Operations & Analytics at ZURU Group. “In line reviews, our forecast accuracy is much better [than other suppliers] because of our access to store-level data.”

4. You see the big picture

A rising tide lifts all ships, and the same applies to CPG category success. Retail buyers, with limited time and many responsibilities, often rely on CPG partners for strategic guidance on category growth and management. This input is particularly valuable when a supplier can use data to identify sales trends and opportunities across geographies, channels, and retailers.

With a CPG data platform like Crisp, brands can provide buyers with weekly reports of key sales data to uncover insights and drive decision-making around pricing, promotions, and product assortments. Moreover, retailers value suppliers that can quickly adapt to changing consumer demands, tracking shifts in preferences and adjusting product offerings to reflect trends such as health consciousness, sustainability, or local sourcing. This responsiveness is essential, especially as consumer expectations continue to evolve.

5. You set the bar for technology

The future of retail is technology-driven, relying on automation, AI, and machine learning to guide decision-making and streamline workflows. Retailers want partners who are ahead of these trends. Having a semantic layer in the technology stack provides a consistent, business-focused language around retail data, expanding access to key insights regardless of department or technical expertise. Daily harmonized and structured data gives AI more to work with, revealing deeper trends and opportunities.

Make collaborative commerce your edge with Crisp

“Our buyers tell us that no other brands are bringing data to the table like we are. In line reviews, our forecast accuracy is much better [than other suppliers] because of our access to store-level data.”
_{Franz Oliveira, Global Director of Sales Operations & Analytics at ZURU Group}

Successful retailer-supplier relationships increasingly depend on trust, transparency, and collaboration. Retailers expect suppliers to share data about consumer insights, market trends, and competitive positioning, as well as provide product- and category-specific intel to optimize decision-making. Crisp is your collaborative commerce platform, enabling you to align marketing strategies, optimize inventory management, and better serve the needs of retailers, suppliers, and consumers alike. Book a demo today.