Promotional out-of-stocks cripple the best efforts of retailers using a "high/low" sales strategy to drive revenue growth. Senior retail executives know that the impacts of stock-outs include poor customer satisfaction, lost sales, and high expedite fees. Many try to mask the problem with excess inventory, which inevitably results in carrying costs, spoilage and temporary price reductions. In reality, most companies often face both situations at the same time on different items, resulting in a chaotic supply chain.

Although many retailers understand the costs associated with promotional out-of-stocks, very few can prevent them. Despite traditional approaches, retailers remain blind to the operational details of their supply chain all the way down to the store-level. Supply chain executives receive only high-level information too late to have an impact, and suppliers, store managers and planners all blame each other for out-of-stocks.

Teradata provides a proven solution to this problem that delivers actionable, store and SKU-level information about promotional out-of-stock rates, as well as the reasons for those out-of-stocks. With Teradata's performance management application, retailers can quickly improve promotional in-stock percentages by 30-60 percent by measuring and addressing causal factors including supplier performance, forecast accuracy and store operations, while at the same time keeping inventory levels down.

The key to improving promotional out-of-stocks is utilizing a management system that takes into account the entire supply chain in all of its complexity. Teradata's performance management software accomplishes this by pulling data from existing supply chain applications, such as POS, ERP, warehouse management, forecasting and data warehouses, in order to continuously monitor the drivers of out-of-stocks and alert decision makers so problems can be avoided.

Teradata enables leading retailers to continuously improved business processes, reducing supply chain costs and increasing corporate revenue. Shoppers today have dozens of purchasing options, the retailers who provide the best experience will develop the brand loyalty required to survive today. Nothing is more important than making sure a promoted product is on the shelf.