SPAR Scotland sales track portal proves a hit

SPAR Scotland Sales Track, the new wholesale and retail data reporting service developed by digital and data company TWC for wholesaler CJ Lang & Son Ltd is proving highly successful, the companies said.

The data solution combines CJ Lang’s wholesale shipments data with EPOS sales data from company owned stores, a first in UK wholesale, helping it make fast and accurate decisions. Hosted through TWC’s SmartView technology with its market leading dashboards, the platform is also easy to use across the CJ Lang business and its suppliers, recognising varied data skills amongst users.

“Incredibly, the implementation of the platform has had very little impact on our operational time, whilst generating a new revenue stream for the business,” Colin McLean CJ Lang chief executive said.

“We are now able, for the first time, to share shipments data to all SPAR Scotland retailers, enabling our partner suppliers to monitor their performance through CJ Lang & Son at a total category, sub-category, brand and SKU level, including competitor data.”

The cloud-based platform reports wholesale shipments data as well as retail sales from Spar Scotland’s company owned stores. It is fully supported by TWC in terms of demos, user guides, ‘how to’ videos and 1-2-1 training sessions.

According to CJ Lang & Son, TWC’s SmartView has helped the business commercialise its data with the two businesses working in close collaboration. Furthermore, the team at TWC has gone above and beyond in successfully converting 70 per cent of the priority prospects identified by CJ Lang & Son into data contracts.

“In the three months since the platform went live, we have had over 40 suppliers sign up to the service. They’ve mainly accessed ‘NAM Dash’, however many suppliers are taking the time to dig deeper from here into the retail basket analysis,” McLean said.

Sandy MacEwen, Head of Sales at TWC, who has worked alongside CJ Lang team for nearly 18 months setting up and embedding the new tool, explained the unique aspects of the platform: “For the first time, stakeholders can view wholesale and retail sales performance on one, easy to use platform.  Our platform has been built to give suppliers quick key facts ‘on the go’via our NAM Dash tool, where you can view category performance right the way down to SKU level information, within a couple of clicks.

“We also have a wholesale analysis tool to help suppliers understand how their products are being bought by retailers within a category, alongside a suite of EPOS analysis tools to help suppliers understand how their customers are buying their products within the company owned stores.”