Paul Writer launches SAP Think Tank , 
Video interview series with Head of Sales highlighting best practices
Devendra Chawla
President – Food Bazaar
Future Group
On the importance of customer centric sales automation…
So while a retail store looks very simple when you go in as a consumer, you find a lot of shelves and gondolas and products are kept a lot of science that goes behind it. Actually, in a way in a manner of speaking retail is technology and a supply chain job actually. You have large warehouses and the whole demand for casting or what will come into the store is actually consumer-led. So depending on how much consumers buy – let’s say a 200 ml shampoo or a 200 ml conditioner, the sales rate decides how much space will that product get into the store, how will it get ordered, at what frequency it will be delivered from the distribution centre to the store, it is a technical term called ARS -Auto Replenishment System which means you have set a formula, so many pieces are kept of a certain product and the moment they sell and come to a certain level it automatically triggers a purchase order which goes from a store to the distribution hub and all the brands, FMCG companies, food companies supply to the distribution center. So actually customers don’t see that, they come to the store but behind that everything is very automated. I mean our system completely runs on SAP so it is highly automated. So if the customer starts buying something more then the frequency of supplying also changes. So the moment a customer takes an action then the whole systems behind starts working accordingly. In an angle of speaking, I said that if you don’t get the supply chain right, if you don’t get your systems right you’ll be left with a lot of empty shelves and a lot of mismatch in consumer demand and what you’re fulfilling.
“So actually customers don’t see that, they come to the store but behind that everything is very automated. I mean our system completely runs on SAP so it is highly automated.”
