How This FMCG Brand Recouped $11M in Lost Sales with Wiser

Background and Challenges

A prominent FMCG manufacturer was facing challenges with monitoring their product placement and ensuring compliance across a vast retail network. Traditionally, they relied on field teams or external partners to assess shelf availability and brand presence, but this approach was both time-consuming and costly. Managing compliance required approximately 1,500 hours of manual work annually, contributing to operational inefficiencies. Additionally, the manual store assessments risked introducing biases, leading to less reliable data and, consequently, ineffective strategies. The company needed a solution that could provide accurate, real-time insights into product visibility and performance in-store.

Key obstacles they encountered included:

• Poor shelf visibility, leading to slow reaction time to stockouts
• Data accuracy issues due to reliance on human observation.
• Significant inefficiencies in monitoring a large number of retail locations and ensuring compliance manually.

Wiser’s Retail Intelligence Solution

To address the challenges of product placement and promotional compliance, Wiser implemented its Retail Intelligence solution, providing the manufacturer with comprehensive and actionable insights into product availability and shelf visibility across major retailers. Key features, benefits, and results include:

Monthly and Ad-Hoc Data Collection:

Wiser’s platform enabled continuous, automated monitoring of product availability, shelf space, and promotional compliance, saving the company approximately 1,500 hours of manual work annually. This allowed their team to focus on higher-value tasks, thereby increasing overall efficiency.

Advanced Analytics Set:

Leveraging Wiser’s analytics, the manufacturer gained deep insights into store-level performance, helping them to quickly identify and resolve out-of-stock situations. This proactive approach led to a 64.3% reduction in time-to-action, enabling the company to restock products faster and reduce missed sales opportunities.

Improved Collaboration:

Wiser’s platform fostered closer collaboration between the manufacturer and their retail partners, streamlining communication and ensuring better execution of sales initiatives. This improved coordination led to better shelf visibility and replenishment speed, helping the manufacturer recoup an estimated $11.4 million in lost sales at one of their highest-volume retailers.

Looking Ahead

With Wiser’s continued support, the manufacturer plans to expand their use of in-store data collection and leverage advanced analytics to drive even greater operational efficiencies. They aim to further integrate real-time visibility into their retail execution strategy, optimizing product availability and brand presence across their growing network of retailers.