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Merchandising · Supplier management
How to prepare for a supplier review meeting
A strong supplier review shows each supplier’s sales, margin and share against last year, and separates growth they earned from growth they bought with promotional funding. 11Ants builds this from your own data in minutes. Ask Ant for a supplier review and you get the numbers, the reasons behind them and the points to raise in the meeting.
THE CHALLENGE
Why does supplier meeting prep take so long?
A supplier review usually means days of pulling sales, margin, promotion and share data from separate reports, then rebuilding it in a spreadsheet. By the time the pack is ready, the numbers are already a week old.
The supplier often arrives with better analysis than the retailer. Without a clear view of which growth was earned and which was funded, it’s hard to push back on terms, promotional plans or range requests.
THE SOLUTION
How does 11Ants build a supplier review?
11Ants pulls the supplier view together from your loyalty and POS data in one request.
Ant builds a supplier summary on request in plain English. For the full review, the Supplier Review (Vendor Review) and Store Product Sales modules show each supplier’s performance in depth, ready to use every trading cycle.
Ask for the review
Type the supplier or brand name and the period, for example “run me a sales review for this brand for the last three years.”
See earned versus bought growth
Ant splits each supplier’s growth into promoted and non-promoted sales, and shows share of category against last year.
Compare suppliers and stores
Ant ranks suppliers and brands within the category and shows how each performs by store and week.
Take the brief into the meeting
Ant turns the findings into a short, meeting-ready brief with the questions to raise.
EXAMPLE QUESTION TO ASK ANT
QUESTION
Which supplier earned the growth in this category, and which is buying it with promotions?
WHAT ANT RETURNS
[Insert a real Ant answer from the category-manager video, using demo data. Keep the demo-data and named-brand disclaimer.]
See Ant prepare a supplier review
Demonstration data; brand names are illustrative and findings do not describe the real brands.
What results do trading teams see?
CASE STUDY
IDEA, Serbia: supplier answers in seconds.
Reports that took IDEA's category strategy team hours or days now take one click, so the team gets straight answers on any topic in supplier meetings. IDEA runs more than 300 stores across 80 cities.
11Ants is like a robot that knows everything. He has all the data, he has all the ideas, he has all the answers.
Sunčica Dučić
Trading Development Manager, IDEA
Now we can access the necessary information within a minute, freeing up time to discover new insights.
Nena Veselinović
Business & Data Analyst, IDEA
Supplier management FAQ
What should a supplier review include?
A supplier review should include sales, units and gross margin against last year, share of category, promoted versus non-promoted sales, store-level performance and range contribution. 11Ants produces all of these from one request to Ant.
How do you know if a supplier’s growth is real?
Compare the supplier’s non-promoted sales and share against last year. If most of the growth came during funded promotions and share fell back afterward, the growth was bought rather than earned. Ant reports this split automatically.
Can suppliers see their own data in 11Ants?
Yes. 11Ants offers secure supplier access, where each supplier sees only its own data. Retailers use it to collaborate with suppliers and create a new source of revenue.
