The FINANCIAL — Accenture has completed an innovative digital merchandising pilot for leading Italian baby food company Mellin SpA, part of the Danone Group.
According to Accenture, the program aimed to enhance the efficiency of Mellin’s merchandising activities at the point of sale and increase product sales.
The pilot program, a collaborative effort between Accenture and Mellin, included the innovative Accenture CAS Digital Merchandising Service, a customizable solution that can help consumer goods companies improve in-store performance by providing a fast and reliable view of their product’s presence and placement on the shelf at retailers. The pilot was designed to reduce the instances of out-of-stock products, improve compliance by retailers and, as a result, improve product sales.
Through the service – part of the Accenture CAS suite of managed services for the consumer goods industry – the shelf can be captured with a small number of photographs from a smart-phone. The images are then automatically sent via the cloud to be processed and translated into actionable information. Mobility software, market analytics and Accenture’s unique proprietary algorithms are the enablers of this new technique to monitor in-store quality and compliance.
The pilot took place in 100 stores in Italy and the results demonstrated how companies can reduce the effort of in-store audit activities while simultaneously generating an improvement in the quality of information and actionable insights. This, in turn, enabled better decisions that helped enhance the presence and placement of Mellin’s products on the shelf.
“This pilot gave positive and encouraging results in terms of in-store performance insight and the corrective actions to be performed. The Accenture CAS Digital Merchandising Service enabled our business to reduce out of stock products, improve retailer compliance, and, ultimately, increase product sales,” said Giusto Curti, Sales Director at Mellin SpA. “We selected Accenture for this initiative as a result of its experience in the consumer goods industry and the unique value proposition of the Accenture CAS Digital Merchandising Service”.
Simone Morandi, senior executive in Accenture’s Consumer Goods & Services practice, said, “The digital merchandising pilot is evidence of how our continuous investment in innovation, deep knowledge of the consumer goods industry, and the focus on commercial services can help our clients to achieve high performance. This pilot illustrates Mellin’s innovative attitude, and its desire to pioneer the adoption of digital merchandising and leverage its unique capabilities to enhance in-store execution and sales performance.”
The Accenture CAS Digital Merchandising Service is part of the Accenture CAS software suite for the consumer goods industry, and were delivered to Mellin SpA from Accenture’s operations in Milan, Italy, including the Accenture Customer Innovation Center. Financial terms of the contract were not disclosed.
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