The KraftHeinz Company is one of the most recognizable food brands in the world. With employees in more than 40 countries and annual sales of more than $25 billion, the Fortune 500 company has been providing popular household brands for more than 150 years. Due to the scale of their operations and the diversity of their retailers, KraftHeinz category management teams are tasked with substantial space planning responsibilities.
Former Head of Category Leadership, Justin Bourlon, leads a team that manages more than 20 categories, each with 1,300 to 4,000 planograms. With that level of work, Bourlon was searching for a space planning software solution that would allow his team to leverage the power of automation to enhance the execution of their category strategies by delivering high-quality planograms quickly and efficiently.
We needed a space planning platform that’s flexible and user-friendly, one that could be adapted quickly to accommodate planograms in any one of our 20 categories. Shelf IQ has been that solution.”-Justin Bourlon - Former Head of Category Leadership
KraftHeinz
Automate Repetitive Planogram Tasks To Increase Speed And Accuracy
“We needed a space planning platform that's flexible and user-friendly, one that could be adapted quickly to any one of our 20 categories,” said Bourlon. “Shelf IQ has been that solution. It has allowed us to base our planogram needs on consumer demands instead of whether we have the resources to actually draw them.”
Commenting on the practical need for a fast, efficient space planning solution, Wes Walker, Category Lead at KraftHeinz, said, “I lead several category teams, and we manage over 5,000 planograms. If I’m sitting in a room with a retail buyer and we're working on a planogram together, our goal is to make planogram assessments quickly and easily and then execute adjustments on the planograms. We're always looking for ways to make smarter and faster shelf decisions, especially when we’re in front of the customer.”
Retail Intelligence For Improved Space Planning Automation
Strategically designed to work in conjunction with the JDA Space Planning program, Shelf IQ delivered immediate results that allowed the KraftHeinz team to refine their space planning process. Once the software solution was implemented, Bourlon and Walker quickly saw how Shelf IQ’s automation would provide qualitative and quantitative benefits for KraftHeinz and their retailers.
By enabling the category planning teams to use strategic planogram templates while developing — and maintaining — sophisticated automation profiles, Shelf IQ would give KraftHeinz the ability to create precise planograms in a fraction of the time they used to spend making manual changes. The Nuqleous team also advised that this increased efficiency would help strengthen their relationships with their retailers by facilitating planning processes that benefited everyone involved — a fact that has proven to be true.
Smarter Space Planning. Enhanced Productivity. Increased Collaboration.
Bourlon and Walker quickly realized that Shelf IQ provided them with a scalable planogram solution that allowed them to increase speed without sacrificing precision--a valuable benefit that will pay dividends as their business grows. “As our turnaround times get shorter and planograms get more complex,” Bourlon shared, “we can turn them around quickly and not worry about losing accuracy.”
As the KraftHeinz category team began utilizing Shelf IQ to drive their space planning process, they noticed that the automation freed them up to make value-added assortment and layout decisions, instead of spending all their time rebuilding scripts and performing manual moves. “Before using Shelf IQ, at best, we would have had to program extremely complicated scripts within Space Automation,” Walker mentioned. “In some cases, we would have been hand-picking items to go with each store shelf. Shelf IQ allows us to quickly tailor each store space and assortment with consistency and accuracy.”
Beyond the time-saving efficiency and product-level precision, Shelf IQ also delivered on the promise to strengthen retailer relationships, a fact that impressed the KraftHeinz category leaders. “By allowing us to consider more data and consumer information in the planning process, Shelf IQ has enabled us to help retailers get the right planogram based on what the consumer wants,” said Bourlon. “We have found that this improved process has strengthened our retailer relationships. When we turn around things quicker, retailers have the option to make decisions that are best for their business, and that produces better outcomes. And as a result, the category grows, and the retailer wins additional share of the market.”
Reflecting on the benefits that Shelf IQ has provided, Bourlon added, “In addition to doing great work, we want our employees to be happy. I don’t want people to come work at KraftHeinz because they can draw 5,000 planograms. I want them to come because they know they can influence the shelf for the consumer instead of spending their days just making manual moves. That’s yet another win that Shelf IQ has provided for us.”