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Fresh Market Manager is a
fully integrated, end to end, management system for perishable, non-perishable
and food service departments such as bakery, deli, produce, meat,
seafood, dairy, floral and frozen. FMM provides category analysis
and precise item management, in-store forecasting and production
planning, computer-aided ordering, perpetual onhand inventory and
real time alerts.
The elements that are defined as part of the total Fresh Market Manager
solution are as follows:
Element I - Perishable
Category Management
(Reporting/analysis,
category management, cost control)
The first FMM ScoreTracker element maintains a minimal footprint
within the supermarket enterprise, yet yields the most returns and
positive impact. In this element, visibility down to the item level
of the business is exposed to all levels of management from department
to corporate. Category management and cost controls can now be accomplished
at a new level of accuracy and feedback that was never attainable
in the past.
The first element is focused on data capture for reporting and analysis.
Processes deployed function to collect:
• Point of sale data: Fresh Market Manager
captures POS data and extracts necessary product information including
item sales and time of purchases.
• Department data: Data collected includes
items produced, quantities, shrink and special order collection.
Element 2 - In-store Forecasting and Production
(Forecaster and Production Planner - Business
Demand Modeling)
At the successful conclusion of the first element, the supermarket
enterprise has had time to understand and take corrective actions
to improve the performance and results within their perishable operations.
In some cases, successes will be uncovered and turned into best practices
to be shared among stores. Nonetheless, once the category management
plans have been established and validated, the second element of FMM
can be implemented to automate forecasting and the production plans
store by store, hour by hour.
Using patented algorithms; the Demand Modeling or Forecaster application
will begin to create a forecast of recommended quantities as well
as the timing of the product production on a store by store, item
by item basis. Taking many of the already established information
from the Cost Control and Category Management of Phase One, the Forecaster
builds its recommendations and delivers the information to the production
planner. The production planner acquires the information and develops
the production plan. It should be noted that recipe input and tasks
and steps for product preparation or merchandising have been previously
defined to FMM. With the inclusion of the Special Order requests directly
included in the production plan, the perishable department manager
has a roadmap of the day's activities. For non-production items, FMM
will suggest re-stocking times.
The automation of this process results in significant time savings
and improved product and resource planning.
Element III - Computer-aided Ordering and Perpetual Onhand Inventory
The third element of Fresh Market Manager provides electronic ordering
and receiving, replenishment processing ("CAO") and use of a SKU based
inventory application. FMM continuously monitors the use of ingredients
and inventory of products (including perpetual on hand) and will prepare
recommended orders and receiving documents. The Inventory application
has the knowledge of the products of which a particular ingredient
may be a part and will provide warning information regarding the products
that will be impacted if an ingredient is not ordered.
Element IV - FMM Alert
Advisor
(Realtime, event-drive alerts)
Even at the first Phase of FMM, Alerts can be defined to notify perishable department managers of issues and problem that have been identified based on the rules of the business. For instance, the production planner can notify a manager of the failure to complete a production task. The Alert manager will present its information to the perishable department manager and will use an escalation process (if you so choose) based on a time trigger or any other defined action. Envisioning the value of an alert, whether send to the PC in the department or to a pager, hand held device or cellular telephone - most customer companies can begin to realize real-time notification of issues or opportunities and can positively impact the bottom line of the business immediately, rather than after the fact.
Providing the ability to deliver information electronically results in significant time-savings and better product and resource planning. Much like any scheduling application, it takes large quantities of information or data and through its patented processes reduces the complex manual process to delivering a checklist of actions. The value of the processes is increased by the fact that the applications can sort and sequence information so that rather than inundating someone with data - the rules based technology will sequence critical items and even offer best practices advice.
A Note on Application Usability
Critical to the success of any technology application is not only
functionality, but usability - especially at department levels where
turnover and computer literacy can be issues. FMM application training
at the store level takes no more than 20 minutes per individual helping
guarantee operating compliance. Park City Groups' usability, training
and Pattern of Management concept met with such great success at Mrs.
Fields Cookies that it became a well documented Harvard business case
study. As part of Park City Group's FMM implementation, we also train
the management team how to most effectively use the tools to achieve
a true top to bottom use of the solution.
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