Reporting for Success

By Adina Deutsch, ERS Intern

The Importance of Reporting

Navigating the performance of a retail or wholesale business can be difficult with so many disparate data sources to keep track of and act upon. A good battery of reports helps by providing actionable, insightful analytics detailing the strengths and weaknesses of the business. They provide greater merchandise decision making ability and efficiencies in everything from category to supply chain management. The key is for reports to focus on the organization’s goals. For example, if improving inventory productivity is a top priority, reports that assign inventory health (low stock, healthy, surplus, etc.) to each item, and a rollup of how much stock is owned at each of these levels immediately highlights opportunities and liabilities.

However, getting there is not easy. Trying to collect, translate and validate POS data from disparate sources is a major distraction for many companies. It keeps them from focusing on what the numbers are saying and what possible actions are. Luckily, Enhanced Retail Solutions (ERS) offers several solutions to take that burden away.

How ERS can help

Over the last 18 years, ERS has perfected the art and science of gathering, integrating and validating POS data from spreadsheets, EDI 852, web portals, and virtually any other format. They also combine POS with ERP, PLM and other 3^rd party data sources to provide deep visibility of sales, the inventory pipeline and forecasts. This full view of data is accessed through customized reports, dashboards and planning toolkits.

With the burden of data collection and report building removed, a company can more effectively assess the overall health of their business and get the insight needed to take action. ERS reports provide not only the numerical data and history, but also specific recommendations to improve future sales and efficiency. This transformation of data to actionable solutions can be used to better understand consumers’ shopping habits, improve merchandise decision making, forecast future sales and inventory needs and better allocate inventory. Providing this level of interpretation is not found on most POS reporting platforms and makes ERS unique.

Our Experience

Because ERS serves companies in so many product categories it has developed a great deal of industry best practices Those retail best practices are immersed in all the consulting and analytic solutions, providing deeper insight than a company can get conducting analysis on their own. The ERS team provides clients with the most complete solution available- consulting to teach, guide and complement the planning team- and the tools to get the job done.

ERS clients have experienced significant increases in sales and profit while reducing their inventory footprint. From simple reporting to more sophisticated vendor managed inventory solutions ERS has helped retailers, suppliers, distributors and brands improve their businesses.

To learn more about Enhanced Retail Solutions and how our reporting can help advance your business, click here.