Category management in retail is a powerful tool that allows retailers to have a deeper understanding of their product performance. To benefit from category management, retailers must effectively implement a program that yields useful data and consistent sales.
Scorpion software equips retailers with user-friendly category management functions to get the most out of their store planning. Retailers who follow best practices for category management are sure to see improvements in their retail operation.
What Is the Purpose of Category Management?
Category management involves structuring inventory in a way that groups merchandise into categories. These categories inform purchasing decisions, stocking strategies, and overall sales performance. Businesses of all types and scales benefit from a category management system so that they can maintain organized inventory and make data-backed choices about procurement. In addition, proper category management is a key step in helping your retail business grow by establishing a strong product infrastructure.
The 4 Best Practices for Category Management in Retail
Retailers can leverage category management to make purchasing easier by letting trends and forecasting guide their choices. Plus, having useful categories can cut costs and avoid over- or under-buying. The following list explains essential best practices for category management in retail.
- Develop categories that make sense. Your merchandise categories should reflect clear delineations between products and make appropriate groupings of similar products. Adding subcategories can add more nuance to your management system and lead to more specific actions within subcategories.
- Tailor merchandising and planogram displays for specific categories. Each category requires a tailored management technique. Retailers can use the unique characteristics of each category to develop successful product promotions and store planogram displays. This specialized approach to each category ensures retailers avoid a blanket approach to all their stocking and merchandising plans.
- Analyze and utilize insights from data. Data is an invaluable resource to retailers looking to maximize product performance in their categories. Data-driven category management enables retailers to respond proactively to local demand and market trends to adjust their purchasing and stocking accordingly. In addition, retailers can identify underperforming categories and make purchasing decisions that highlight their high performers and avoid costs for poor performers.
- Integrate category management with planogram software. Retailers can simplify their category management with an automated software that performs category insights as well as other retail actions like planogram design.
Integrate Category Management with Scorpion Software
While category management in retail takes effort to incorporate into your retail operations, Scorpion planogram software is a simple and comprehensive solution to category management and store planning. Scorpion generates clear graphics and charts that visualize inventory trends and track sales over time. These software outputs can influence your space allocation decisions and shelving tactics to boost sales.
Scorpion produces various analyses such as gap analysis and cross planogram analysis, which help retailers identify actionable gaps in offerings and optimize store planograms. Retailers can easily interpret rich data and take immediate steps to adapt their planogram and inventory to meet demand. Contact the Scorpion team with any question or to set up a live demo to try the software for yourself and discover the benefits of category management.