Planograms are important in many retail sectors but play an especially critical role for grocery stores and supermarkets. More than a simple tool that only makes a difference at the margins, modern planogram software solutions offer real-time feedback and dynamic design that creates a deeper understanding of how your space can optimize store sales. Whether opening a new store or looking to upgrade your current system, there’s never a bad time to evaluate your planogram software needs. From template design and 3D merchandising to planogram automation and category management, let Scorpion show you why our grocery store planogram software is just the resource your supermarket(s) need.
Category Management and Insights
Category management is a huge and integral part of any successful grocery store planogram. While fashion retailers may deal with a dozen or so clothing and apparel categories, supermarkets typically have a couple dozen major categories as well as several layers of overlapping sub-categories—all of which need to be actively monitored for changes to buying patterns and inventory supplies.
How do different types of brands perform in various product facing placements? How does the performance of one item affect the performance of relate items? How does the performance in one area of the store affect adjacent areas? How does the performance vary based on each store location? How does the performance vary month over month, season over season, and year over year? And, most importantly, what can this data tell you about optimizing your sales floor both this week as well as the next time you undertake a major reshuffling of your grocery store floor plan?
You need a software solution that will track advanced data metrics but also report this data to relevant team members in a way that leads to actionable gains. Too often, category management is a passive process for supermarket retailers who believe they can follow just the most basic rules for tracking category-based sales. Instead, we prefer to think of category management as a dynamic process that offers proximal benefits for increasing sales but is also a process that directly contributes to this deeper level understanding of your individual grocery store or supermarket chain. It’s also why we call these Scorpion software features Category Insights.
Balancing Customer Experience and Space Optimization
Optimizing your high-visibility merchandising displays can have a huge impact on your bottom line. As grocery store owners and managers know, impulse buys make a huge portion of a shopper’s total spend per visit. Some sources say these unplanned purchases make up about 40 percent of a shopper’s total bill. Other sources suggest a figure as high as two-thirds of the entire purchase.
With this in mind, it becomes obvious that grocery store planograms are about more than just design templates for product facings. More than efficient planogram design for stocking shelves, you need to ensure that more open arears of your supermarket are pulling their weight. Do these high-visibility areas also encourage the shopper to relax and spend more time browsing the displays before returning to the main aisles for more planned purchases? How can these areas be designed to better meet this goal?
One thing you’re going to want is Scorpion 3D planogram software. This 3D planogram feature renders a virtual environment of your grocery store(s). You can see what your customers will see based on various design decisions. This is a powerful merchandising tool for creating featured displays along the edges of the store and in-between supermarket aisles. It’s also a great resource to be able to see how corners, intersections and end-cap displays are likely to impact foot traffic patterns and basic navigation between multiple shoppers with full-sized shopping carts.
As experienced grocery store managers know, when it comes to getting the most out of your available floor space, every inch counts. How do you maximize the number of effective product facings while also minimizing potential conflict between shoppers? The answer involves a combination of planogram design, category management, and visual merchandising that work in harmony toward the end-goal of whole store space optimization.
Grocery Store Planogram Compliance and Automation
Often, the key to successful implementation of aisle-to-aisle planogram design is scalability and compliance. Planograms are an essential resource that can directly impact the bottom-line for your grocery store, but you can’t spend half the marketing budget on the visual merchandising for two brands of ketchup. Moreover, all the data insights in the world won’t do you any good if the aisles and product facings don’t match the planogram.
Compliance-to-design only extends so far, however. Without a platform that allows for communication between suppliers and retailers, key insights and compliance with fundamental principles of food merchandising are going to be missed. The Scorpion software platform offers a bridge for retailers and suppliers which allows for planogram automation that is still capable of leveraging key insights about sales trends and category management.
E-Commerce Grocery Store Planograms
The new online supermarket consumer is looking for a higher level of convenience, but that doesn’t mean the basic principles of rotational displays and range assortment don’t apply. You still want to advertise new products and special promotions to encourage customers to explore the product offerings more fully.
Especially during this relatively new period of online grocery shopping and pickup orders, it’s also true that many customers will use a mix of planned online shopping and impromptu trips to the grocery store. Our software can help you explore this new potential and measure the effectiveness of various combinations of online and in-store planogram designs. Optimize your sales for years to come, while also having the tools you need to evaluate new customer service models. View our planogram Gallery, and discover how Scorpion can be part of your store’s new online and in-store supermarket experience.
Planograms for Grocery Store Design and Reorganization
Grocery stores consistently benefit from occasionally reorganizing their store. The basic principle is getting customers to look at different brands and new products they usually miss during their normal shopping routine. This may include reshuffling where items are located. It may also include redoing entire sections of the store including where stock aisles and open areas are located. It all depends on the end goal. Is it to get people to walk around more of the store and see new items? Is it refresh the look and vibe of the store environs? Is it part of a larger marketing campaign for the grocery store brand? How long before the next reshuffle? Regardless, Scorpion software can be a great resource for whole store design projects of any scope. While our platform improves communication and coordination between retailers and suppliers, we also offer multiple software applications that can speak to specific design and implementation needs for your grocery store planograms:
- Plan the reshuffling of your shelves and product facings with the planogram tool. This software includes automation, template design, 3D design, and category management.
- Plan or redesign your entire store with our store planning software. Store planners will have the ability to view all planograms and offer feedback information to the merchandising team within the same user interface.
- Optimize your range and assortment planning with full access to all range and space planning materials including category insights and visual elements.
Discover Scorpion One Software for Grocery Stores
Supermarket merchandising is a multi-faceted operation with several potentially make-or-break decisions along the way. More than other kinds of retailers, grocery stores typically need more than a standalone planogram application. With Scorpion One, you can get all these applications in one software solution. We’re the only software provider that offers this kind of integrated platform for planogram, store planning, and range planning features.
Do it all with fewer resources than you thought possible. Discover how grocery stores are using our software to get more efficient while also upgrading their planogram solutions and whole store merchandising.