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 Category Management has been used as a business process since the early 1990s, and remains a driver for businesses today. Not only are an increasing number of companies adopting category management, but it is being used more strategically than ever before.
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| Category management is being more widely used | |
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Recent IGD research, published in 'Welcome to Category Management', shows that increasing numbers of UK companies are using the full 8-step approach to category management, or a streamlined version of it. The use of tactical processes, focusing on in-store quick wins, has significantly declined, further highlighting the shift towards a strategic approach for long term sustainable growth.
IGD has been tracking the practice of category management for over ten years. The latest survey collated results from over 140 companies globally, to gain an in-depth understanding of the discipline from both retailers and suppliers. This has been combined with current best practise case studies and industry knowledge to provide a guide to category management for companies both new to the discipline, or interested in improving their current set up.
Which of the following statements best describes how your company practises category management?
Source: IGD Research, 2007
Improving the department’s structure
The survey's findings reveal a significant increase in the number of suppliers with specialised category management departments having day to day responsibility for the discipline. This enables the specialist team to be truly category focused by separating its day to day activities from the sales and brand targets. As a result there is a reduction in the number of sales teams responsible for category management.
From a practical perspective it is difficult for sales teams with sales targets to ever truly divorce themselves from these goals and become category focused. It is also sensible to separate category and sales functions to facilitate the practice of legal category management. ‘Welcome to Category Management’ looks at a typical category team structure from both the supply and retail side and why it is important to aligned roles with partners to leverage the best relationship.
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