Apollo Performance Optimiser

Apollo Performance Optimizer

Making it easy to create effective assortment
Space on shelf is more valuable than ever. How do you make sure the products on shelf are giving the best return? The right assortment means higher sales and profits but how do you find the assortment that best satisfies the business objectives of you and your trading partners? A standard power ranking report will answer several questions, but it won't address your business strategy requirements, nor provide insights into 'unique vs. non-unique volume', incremental sales and cannibalisation. Apollo Performance Optimizer features an easy-to-use and logical wizard driven approach, which guides the user through:

• Data importing & cleansing
• Assessment of the current category assortment
• Assignment of cannibalisation values
• Assignment of strategy by category, subcategory.
• Assortment analysis and recommendations for merchandising directly into Apollo Professional
• Implementation of assortment in a planogram

Simple to use
This seamlessly integrated software combines one-of-a-kind category assessment and assortment planning as well as powerful space planning capabilities. Specifically, Apollo Performance Optimizer is a decision support tool that recommends optimum assortment. It does this by considering category segmentation, multiple product performance measures, product cannibalization and interaction, business strategies and merchandising rules. The assortment decisions are then imported directly into Apollo Professional for merchandising and distribution.

Quick, robust business decisions
Apollo Performance Optimizer allows the user to view the category the way the consumer does. This can be predetermined through integration and application of retailer data - ensuring better assortment decisions; leading to greater business opportunities. These consumer-based decision tree attributes can be user-defined or imported. Automated assortment planning saves the user effort and simplifies the process ensuring accuracy and timeliness.

Measure cannibalisation effects on existing brands
Apollo Performance Optimizer determines optimum assortment based on unique cannibalisation logic. For example, Products A and B are similar. By adding Product B to the assortment, how much will it cannibalise the sales of Product A? Or, conversely, Products A and B are unique.

What incremental volume does Product B add?
Allows evaluation and comparisons of different business strategies. Assigning a business strategy entails weighting three measures - Volume, Profit and Equity (Equity is a measure of consumer value like loyalty to brand or share of market volume). For example, a Traffic Building Strategy might weight Volume at 80%, Profitability at 10% and Equity at 10%. Apollo Performance Optimizer then creates a composite 'VPE' index to score each product's expected performance against strategy. Apollo Performance Optimizer then seeks to optimise the category's cumulative VPE score. Once the user has selected the best strategy or mix of strategies, the assortment is implemented in the planogram. Apollo Performance Optimizer allows the user to build multiple scenarios to compare the assortment implications of one strategy against another. For example, you could examine how a Profit-Generating strategy measures up against a Traffic-Building strategy. Scenarios quantify the expected results of different assortments before you implement at the shelf.

Why buy Apollo Performance Optimizer™?
Making it easy to create effective assortment

Space on shelf is more valuable than ever. How do you make sure the products on shelf are giving the best return?

The right assortment means higher sales and profits but how do you find the assortment that best satisfies the business objectives of you and your trading partners?

A standard power ranking report will answer several questions, but it won’t address your business strategy requirements, nor provide insights into unique vs. non-unique volume, incremental sales and cannibalisation.

THE FUNCTION OF APOLLO PERFORMANCE OPTIMIZER
Apollo Performance Optimizer is an interactive decision support tool for category, brand and sales managers. It allows structured and sophisticated data analyses to be easily performed in order to measure each product’s importance to the category and to recommend the optimum assortment for each different shelf fixture type or shelf scenario.
Apollo Performance Optimizer features an easy-to-use and logical wizard-driven approach which guides the user through:

Data importing & cleansing
Assessment of the current category assortment
Assignment of cannibalisation values
Assignment of strategy by varying level: - Category, Subcategory
Assortment analysis and recommendations for merchandising directly into Apollo Professional
Implementation of assortment in a planogram

THE BENEFITS OF APOLLO PERFORMANCE OPTIMIZER

Simple to use through a unique wizard-driven methodology
Enables quick and robust business decisions
Measures cannibalisation effects on existing brands
Allows evaluation and comparison of different business strategies
Consumer-based decision tree attributes can be use defined or imported
Powered by Information Resources and Milton Merl & Associates, Inc.
Part of a complete merchandising solution from Apollo

SUMMARY
Apollo Performance Optimizer dramatically increases the speed with which an assortment review is performed. It enables everyone involved in the process, from the manufacturer through to the retail category manager, to make informed decisions based on fact. The prize at stake is an increase in productivity and a dramatic effect on bottom line profitability. And what’s more you pay only once to manage all of your categories.

Apollo Performance Optimizer Case Study

Project: Making the most of 50% less space

THE BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Our client was a leading manufacturer of canned soup who has traditionally focused on condensed soup. With this market in decline they were looking to increase their offering in the ‘ready-to-eat’ soup market, which was dominated by their competitors.
In order to get shelf space for their new ‘ready-to-eat’ soup they wanted to reduce the condensed soup fixture from 8 ft to 4 ft to make room for their extended assortment. To gain agreement from the retailer the client needed hard facts on the impact this would have on the category.

The question to IRI was a simple one: ‘Which products must the client put into the 50% of space available for the condensed soup assortment in order to maximise sales and profitability?’

HOW IRI HELPED
IRI supplied the client with Apollo Performance Optimizer - the latest addition to their assortment of integrated merchandising solutions. This tool delivers optimum assortment using advanced modelling techniques - including product cannibalisation.

Using Apollo Performance Optimizer, the client was able to perform sophisticated data analyses to measure each product’s importance to the category. Taking this data they identified the most appropriate business strategy to meet their needs. Apollo Performance Optimizer’s built-in methodology enables the user to evaluate various scenarios based upon achieving the optimum mix of brand volume, profit and equity.

The chosen assortment was then placed automatically into Apollo Professional for re-merchandising based on the new product assortment and strategies.

THE RESULTS
The simple wizard-based approach of Apollo Performance Optimizer meant that the complexity usually associated with this process was removed thereby minimising the time taken for the client to achieve robust results.

The client found the scenario which best met their strategic objectives resulted in a reduction of the condensed soup fixture by 10 SKU’s and nearly 50% of facings.
The results amazed the client as they showed:

- A 33% reduction in days of stock from 15 days to 10 days, thereby leading to a significant reduction in overall product cost
- An increase in share of space on the fixture for the client by 8%
- Zero decline in sales for the client
- Less than 1% decline in sales for the category as a whole.

By using Apollo Performance Optimizer the client was able to provide speedy and robust results to support their business case and win listings for their new assortment of ‘ready-to-eat’ soups.