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Fresh Item Management ( FIM )
RAPID Project Toolkit™
C-CORE FIM News January 2010 - C-CORE and Sobeys present Fresh Item Management ( FIM ) Future at NRF, Click here to see Supermarket News Article
Fresh Item Management answers what to make when, and what to order, allowing store personnel to focus on meeting operational and food safety standards.
We begin an analysis of Fresh Item Management with sessions discussing the goals and objectives of a FIM project within the framework of this process wheel:
Unlike other RAPID Project Toolkit engagements, there is a very short list of vendors offering ‘fresh’ solutions and C-CORE is typically engaged in a fresh project beginning with defining Scope and Requirements, followed by a Project Launch to get to pilot and plan for a full rollout. Having led the largest Fresh engagement in North America, we understand the challenges of data, processes, multiple banners and formats, and the nuances of planning production for multiple store types and offerings. Unlike our other toolkits, a Fresh project typically has two phases:
1. Scope and Objectives, requirements definition and vendor fit analysis.
2. Project Launch, including project planning, phasing, pilot and deployment.
The first challenge in fresh is in defining scope and functionality required to drive business improvement. Our toolkit methodology provides for an efficient method to quickly define the products impacted by the core processes of capturing and measuring shrink, planning production, capturing inventories and generating a suggested order for complex items such as recipes and meat primal and sub-primals. Success in Fresh Item Management requires a thorough analysis of the data dependencies and relationships between raw goods and ingredients to finished production goods.
FIM Audit
As an alternative to a full Fresh project, we offer a FIM Audit, or diagnostic of your goals and objectives, current state performance, processes and results, resulting in a management recommendation on how to proceed with Fresh.
The Audit includes many components of a full FIM Toolkit engagement including:
• Scope and Objectives -defines goals and objectives for FIM improvements
• Process Wheel -review of all FIM processes, current state and technology opportunity
• Product Opportunity Grid -review of all fresh categories and opportunity for shrink reduction, production planning and suggested orders
• Business Function Model -who owns what in your company, facilitating business discussions required for success
• FIM Diagnostic -opportunities in your organization based on business processes
• Day in the Life –company-wide impact of Fresh Item Management
• Detailed ROI Calculator -potential savings based on diagnostic, for phased implementation of Fresh Item Management
• Functionality Review- deep dive on shrink and production functionality to understand key concepts
• High Level Project Plan-recommendation on timelines and resources-based on the audit-to get started with FIM
Our requirements are the most thorough available in the industry today and will quickly accelerate your project timelines with full buy in from all project stakeholders on scope, requirements and store impacts. Each toolkit template or tool has been refined from multiple uses, providing for the most efficient use of your time, tested and proven in more than 20 retail consulting engagements in the past few years.
Our deployment tools focus on the impact of the technology and phasing on your stores and your personnel. From management to front line workers, FIM has a major impact on people, and our planning and execution focus ensures you will build the proper metrics, training and communication plan to minimize the change management impact to your stores and headquarters staff.
A Fresh Future
If Fresh is to be truly a point of differentiation for grocers, then production planning and shrink control is only the first step towards a fresh future. C-CORE, working on the largest FIM implementation in North America to date, has developed a series of worksheets and tools to enable retailers to develop and refine their Fresh Strategy for today, improving sales and profits, and in the future, as the retailer’s data and technology evolves.
The customer shopping item selection process has changed significantly with the advent of web-based shopping. Our approach considers the data required to fully support the customer experience through each step of the shopping experience. Consider these criteria, from work done by GS-1, modified for Fresh by C-CORE.
Unless one views the implementation of Fresh Item Management, including shrink, production planning and suggested ordering, as a first step towards a “Fresh Future”, a fresh project will result in an untrained workforce under utilizing non-integrated technologies, and the customer experiencing a shopping experience that highlights a lack of holistic thinking. Fresh demands an integrated focus on the customer experience, supply chain and workforce efficiency.
Frequently Added Questions (FAQ’s)
Why C-CORE?
Quite simply, speed and experience. We have led the largest implementation Fresh Item Management in North America to date. We understand the linkages and dependencies of current ordering and financial systems, data and business processes for fresh.
When you deal with C-CORE you are dealing with a core group of experts with over 50 combined years of retail front line experience. When you use one of the large consulting outfits you are generally receiving the low level experienced personnel in the engagement or paying exorbitant fees for the principals and a delayed project timeframe. With C-CORE , you get both a proven methodology and experienced consultants delivering the speed to market and the experience of many installations and vendor selections.
The Toolkit is content rich and designed to be quickly aligned with project management best practices.
The Toolkit focuses on jump-starting the requirements definition and vendor evaluation and provides Microsoft office compatible based templates easily converted to a retailers templates and methodology to launch the project quickly while leveraging the project disciplines that retailers have developed in their IT organizations. Our toolkit methodology has been reviewed to be consistent with PMI methodology.
Why would I need to use the toolkit? I have a strong IT organization
Vendors and Retailers have both expressed concerns over the challenges of starting a project such as a WFM implementation. Many of the resources responsible for the current platform support have been promoted, or moved to other organizations. Typically, retailers have not placed much value in creating and updating process and requirements repositories. In a recent engagement, a retailer provided a list of 85 requirements that represented a month of work to develop. They were amazed to prioritize an additional 2100 functional and 800 technical requirements in only 5 days.
The RAPID PROJECT TOOLKIT provides the mechanism to jump-start the process and move through business requirement definition and vendor selection quickly.
How much help will I need to use this toolkit?
We estimate that project support and skills transfer can take place in 15-20 full productive days, including customizing the information for the retailer's business, depending on the complexity of the retail operation, and preparing for full pilot.
What retail verticals are considered in the Fresh Item Management Toolkit?
The RAPID Fresh Project Toolkit is designed for grocers, c-stores, theaters, and restaurants of all types. Where food is served, the RAPID Fresh toolkit can be used to lower costs and improve profitability.
Contact us today for more information on our Fresh Item Management RAPID Project Toolkit.
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