Route to Market & Supply Chain Blog

Chasing Air Miles I have travelled widely over the years and tried to add one new country each year until I stumbled at just under 50 locations. Many were holidays but the majority were business travels with few opportunities available to actually…

In a number of articles this year I have covered many of the aspects of distributor selection and management. The challenge for many organisations, particularly multinationals, is to ensure a consistent application and execution of best practice. In…

In an earlier article and post, I covered the internal and external considerations related to distributor selection. I now want to focus on an increasingly important topic of the integration of online and offline distribution. This is a key issue in…

In an earlier article and post, I covered the internal and external considerations related to distributor selection. I now want to focus more on the distributor and how we make an assessment. We call this a Micro-Assessment. It involves spending…

Going Underground I am not a frequent traveller to London or the UK in general for that matter so getting around is always a challenge and particularly when travel by the Tube is required. In the rush hours at each end of the day there must be more…

First Serve Recently, I witnessed an intense Grand Slam match of blame tennis recently in the board room of a popular FMCG multinational. The intensity and aggression on display presented a mental image of a tennis match with John McEnroe, Ilie…

Feeling good? On a daily basis the amount of care we give to the human body is remarkably little. When you are feeling good the best the body can hope for is a shower, a brush of the teeth and a slap of moisturiser. What else? Haircut and manicure…

Shrinkage? The term 'shrinkage' covers a multitude of possibilities e.g. damage, theft, administration errors and even variable supplier integrity. All these and more inevitably lead to missing stock, extra cost and ultimately, poor Customer…

T.E.A.M - everybody achieves more? Eventually, the success of a manager really depends on their team and how they interact and support each other. In business, your people will be required to work in teams if success is to be achieved. Each team…

S&OP, is it for me? Sales & Operational Planning (S&OP) has been used in FMCG companies for many years as the planning process that provides 'one set of operational numbers' for the organisation. In many countries and cultures S&OP in its common…

Networking I recently met the CEO of an FMCG beverages company at a charity fund raising evening and both being fans of the foaming ale, we settled on a canape-fuelled discussion on all things beer. At this event I was not wearing my Supply Chain…

They think it's all over! The ink is drying on the deal, the celebratory champagne corks have been popped and the sharp-suited lawyers have gone off to spend their small fortunes. The projected negotiations to thrash out a deal to buy, sell or merge…

Who let the dogs out? If you lived in or visited Bucharest about 10 years ago you will have seen one or two stray dogs hanging around the city. Actually, a lot more than one or two, there were hoards of them. In 2010 a proposal was made to organise…

Your call is important to us.... Previously, we looked at how some companies are economical with the truth when it comes to measuring Customer Service. Today we take a look at how your telephone face to the customer can be helping or hindering your…

Service with a smile? Do FMCG companies delude themselves on Customer Service (CS) performance? I think some companies are guilty of this but may or may not know it is happening! Whatever service related Key Performance Indicator (KPI) you measure,…