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by Surefront on Sep 26, 2024 9:00:00 AM
Home > Blog > Decisive, Not Disorganized
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Rise Above the Mundane
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Efficiency Buyers often create their own spreadsheets to track purchases-in-progress, and spend time categorizing their emails by vendors; this tool does it all for them. |
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Efficacy Buyers can track each decision’s impact on their Open-to-Buy dollars, ensuring they stay within their program budget. New Buyers have everything they need to quickly get up to speed on a category. |
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Feelings Buyers feel less swamped by inputs from every direction, and able to make fully-informed decisions in a clear and concise fashion. |
Buyers make better decisions when all their offers, products, and vendors are in one place.
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Before |
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After |
| Product offers arrive as email attachments | All offers organized by program and date in the Buying Time home screen | |
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Each vendors uses their own offer format |
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All offers are created in standardized Buying Time format |
| Nearly impossible to compare vendors head-to-head | Buying Program Aggregate screen allows product comparison across vendors | |
| Laborsome self-organization techniques, like organizing inbox by vendor |
Built-in filters and user-created groupings to work like you want |
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“Sometimes I will get caught up in buying for a program and afterwards realize I spent $20 million on what was supposed to be a $4 million program.” -Buyer, 5 years |
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“It would have been so confusing to look at multiple Excel spreadsheets from each vendor and try to compare them head-to-head. This is amazing.” -Buyer, 3 years |
Organization: This or That?
We conducted A/B testing of different organizational schemes to understand buyers' mental models of information organization. We tested with 14 buyers and vendors at the Americasmart Apparel Tradeshow. Two example tests are analyzed below.
When you’re making decisions on a product offer, would you rather select the products you want, or remove the products you don't want?
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Adding Products |
Removing Products |
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Benefits: Participants liked that this technique made them thoroughly review each product before adding to their ‘cart’–a workflow familiar from e-commerce. Interestingly, some commented that adding products felt more ‘positive’, while removing products felt ‘negative’. Trade-offs: Participants were worried this might be more time-intensive, especially if they wanted to order the majority of the products within an offer. |
Benefits: Participants felt that this technique was ‘cleaner’, allowing them to progressively make the order smaller and smaller as they eliminated products that didn’t fit their needs. |
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Grid View |
List View |
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Benefits: Participants liked that this technique made them thoroughly review each product before adding to their ‘cart’–a workflow familiar from e-commerce. Interestingly, some commented that adding products felt more ‘positive’, while removing products felt ‘negative’. Trade-offs: Participants were worried this might be more time-intensive, especially if they wanted to order the majority of the products within an offer. |
Benefits: Participants felt that this technique was ‘cleaner’, allowing them to progressively make the order smaller and smaller as they eliminated products that didn’t fit their needs. |
Buyers view the big picture...
Buyers can view an aggregate of all products that they have purchased or are considering purchasing for a particular buying program, such as a Back to School program.
1) I view aggregate calculations. I see a snapshot of all relevant calculations for a program, including average margin, total quantity, and physical size of the order.
2) I view all products for the program. I see all the products I am considering for a particular program, with a clear view of their status.
3) I track my financials. I see how close I am to the budget I set for the program.
4) I buy within my time frame. I keep tabs on the schedule needed to get my products to stores on time.
…and both stay organized.
Collaboration means access to some of the same information. Both buyers and vendors can see all product offers and purchase orders on one Home screen.
1) I can see all my Purchase Orders. My goal is to receive new Purchase Orders, so I see new ones at the top of the screen.
2) I can filter and search. I can slice and dice my offers by program, buyer, and date.
3) I view offers by program. When I click on a program, I see the program details and any relevant offers.
4) I preview before diving in. Each offer I see has thumbnail images that give me the gist of what is included in the offer.
5) I can access my history. I can find offers that are no longer active in my History section.
You don’t want your data to be siloed. Your company’s CRM, PIM and PLM solutions shouldn’t operate in a vacuum, either. Surefront is a unified product collaboration platform to power growth and ROI. Our patented PIM, CRM, and PLM solutions streamline the omni channel sales, merchandising and product development processes. By combining these essential functionalities, Surefront creates a single source of truth throughout your product lifecycle, sales and listing processes.
The results? Up to 150% more revenue per employee and a 40% shorter product development cycle is just the beginning. Try our 10x ROI calculator to see your company’s potential profits. Or, skip the noise and book a custom demo with one of our unified product collaboration management experts today. The retail industry evolves quickly and has a lot of moving parts. We do all of the research, so you don’t have to. Stay ahead of market fluctuations, trends and new features by subscribing to our Unified Product Collaboration Management Blog.
Further Reading
The Essential Guide to Product Development and Merchandising
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