1. What Is Inventory Management and Replenishment? 

DTS (Direct to Store) is in store inventory management for the grower servicing stores under the pay-by-scan OR vendor managed inventory model from the retailers. Suppliers are selling material and product direct from the store. The loss of inventory could be due to sales, transfer of product, or unknown shrink.  

2. What is Unknown Loss? 

Unknown shrink is loss of your product. This loss could be theft or just misplaced in the store. It is the difference of what should be on the shelf vs. what is physically on the shelf. Most often it is when a vendor, employees, customers, do not know where it is and it’s not easy to identify.

DTS manages your in-store inventory by accounting for it, tracking it, and allows the supplier to measure it.  When you can identify the areas of shrink, you can become more effective.

DTS provides visibility for your entire team to be aware of this issue so you can discuss ways to better track and prevent stolen products.  

3. What is Replenishment and How Do You Replenish? 

Replenishment is the decision process of what needs to go into store after you get initial deliveries stocked into the store and initial sell through in order to meet the demand. 

Based on what was initially shipped and sold, you can make decisions to decide how much to restock. 

There a many different algorithms that are required as the foundation of replenishment.  DTS offers multiple algorithms for suggested order quantity to be flexible and assist in simplifying the process for all the different live goods suppliers. 

4. What Are Inventory Replenishment Methods? 

There are many different methods and mindsets growers use to replenish. Some growers may focus on unit amount regardless of the price, while some consider price because that is what drives the consumer to buy it. 

Sell Thru percentage, for example, is a metric addresses the needs of all products and is a way is which the retailers measure performance. A good sell through for the live goods industry is 80-85%, if it is 90% or higher you may be dealing with lost opportunity to have shipped more. 

Replenishment methods can vary from store to store on by demand, the weeks of supply, lean time or min/max, cost of supply, and the list goes on.  DTS can provide all of those plus customized calculations to meet the need of live goods product suppliers. 

5. Can DTS Give You Access to Real-Time Inventory Data? 

DTS offers near real time data data flow. It brings in sales data from the retailer day or in the middle of night. All of the data flows can be automated to give you a up to date view of store inventory. Sales and deliveries can be automated and synced with any accounting system. Inventory counts to true up on-hand quantities can be collected by your team and visible for all employees that may need access to make the important decisions of where to put product next. 

6. How Does DTS Improve Supplier Performance  

DTS measures the performance of the supplier, it is made for the suppliers and is a tool to use to improve your operation. It provides data to supply their performance back to the retailer while improving your profit margin. Two key measures are weeks of supply and sell thru performance. This is how many of the large retailers measure in store sales performance.  

7. How Can You Get Quality Assurance 

Direct To Store provides you with Quality Assurance as it is the eyes of Replenishment and lets you know how you are doing. DTS and reporting inventory management answers what am I doing? It is the reality of what is going on. You need good clean data; this helps you clean up the numbers when store visits are made by your team. 

Learn more about the Pay by Scan model arrangement between growers and big-box retailers as well as information on software capabilities needed for this model and key factors for success. Read the Pay by Scan Playbook here.

If you need an inventory management program for vendor managed inventory programs for your company that is well supported and regularly updated and has helpful features, then look at DTS Direct To Store/ Merch. Our team can also answer general questions about what grower technology or grower software may be best for your operation (even if it is not ours) so reach out to us with any grower software questions or request a free demo contact us.