Data company TWC has been celebrating the close working partnership with CJ Lang & Son Ltd with its SPAR Scotland Sales Track – the new wholesale and retail data reporting service – hosted through TWC’s SmartView technology with its market leading dashboards.
CJ Lang & Son wanted a data solution that could combine its wholesale shipments data with EPOS sales data from company-owned stores – a first in UK wholesale – in order to make fast and accurate decisions. It was imperative that the platform was easy to use across the CJ Lang & Son business and its suppliers, recognising that data skills varied amongst users.
In just three months, the resulting SPAR Scotland Sales Track was developed and launched, on time and on budget. The cloud-based platform reports wholesale shipments data as well as retail sales from Spar Scotland’s company owned stores. Spar Scotland Sales Track 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.
Colin McLean
“Incredibly, the implementation of the platform has had very little impact on our operational time, whilst generating a new revenue stream for the business,” said CJ Lang & Son CEO Colin McLean. “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.
“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.”
Sandy MacEwen
Sandy MacEwen, Head of Sales at TWC, who has worked alongside CJ Lang & Son’s team for nearly 18 months setting up and embedding the new tool, presented a demonstration of the platform at last month’s Spar Scotland Trade Show.
“The Retail Basket Analysis shows the importance of how data can be used to drive growth opportunities as it’s very easy to find trends that are specific to a category within the platform,” she explained. “Suppliers are already in conversations with the CJ Lang & Son’ trading team around cross-category promotions, through the insights they've found using the Retail Basket Analysis - watch this space!"
