When a customer enters your store for alcohol, they have an idea of what they’re going to pay. They are loyal to your location and watch advertisements, or they have visited a competitor and purchased the same product at their store. Either way, they have a price they expect to pay and won’t accept buying a case of beer for more than they anticipated. So, if your customers won’t accept a variance in what they expect to pay for alcohol, neither should you.
In the grocery space, understanding when your expected price is different from the actual price you paid for a product can be the difference between hitting or missing margins. Unfortunately, the effort it takes to effectively manage your price book and gain control of these variances can be one of the most cumbersome and challenging aspects of beverage alcohol management. Whether you operate a single, family-owned location, or you work at the corporate office for a national brand, the challenges surrounding accurate data and costly resources remain the same. But, as technology in our segment continues to progress, there are a few key strategies that grocers can follow to not only ensure expected alcohol margins but can begin to take alcohol profits to the next level.
Take Control of the Order Process
Typically, the ordering process can be one of the most time-consuming parts of beverage alcohol management. Whether you utilize a sophisticated inventory system and use purchase orders, or have location-level management manually place orders, there are a lot of time and resources wasted. By merely automating your order management process, you can eliminate manual order entry and gain visibility that ensures control over the products entering your stores. Through technology providers like Fintech, grocers can have purchase orders automatically uploaded to the distributor and validated against the line items on the invoice, so you know your stores are accepting the correct products at the right price. You can also ensure that you’re ordering in the most efficient way for your business, always receiving discounts where applicable, and are purchasing the right products for your store. This also gives you the autonomy to introduce new products into your portfolio when the market calls for it – like the growing hard seltzer trend.
Embrace the Tech
The availability of technology within the industry is growing every day, both on the consumer and business operations side. It’s time to take advantage of the tech available in the grocery world that will significantly reduce manual processes, and positively impact your bottom line. Challenges like easily understanding invoice details, managing credits due in a timely manner, or even focusing in-store resources on prepping payment upon delivery, can be overcome through automation by partnering with a technology solutions provider. For example, by simply switching to an automated payment method, you’ve immediately cut down delivery times, eliminated excess labor costs to prep, and increased visibility into potential margin-eaters. This approach also offers a digital invoice management process that provides corporate offices with insight into the purchase habits and alcohol spend for each location, so it’s simple to compare purchase prices between products, distributors, and locations. Finally, by gaining digital copies of your invoices, you can directly import this information into your back-office system, eliminating countless hours spent on manual data entry and the potential inaccuracies that accompany those processes.
Drive Decisions with Data
Arguably the greatest benefit of adopting digital alcohol management tools available in the industry is the opportunity to make decisions for your business based on accurate and timely data. Through inclusive visibility, you gain the ability to review your order history to ensure you’re taking advantage of discounts while avoiding unnecessary delivery fees and ordering to the cadence that makes the most sense for your locations. Another benefit is gaining access to compare your expected alcohol pricing to what was actually charged on your invoice, allowing you to recover credits or update retail pricing in real-time to proactively protect, or better yet, increase your margins. Uncovering these variances can have a lasting impact on the way you manage your price book, ultimately leading to improved margins.
Alcohol management solutions like Fintech are bringing alcohol operations into the 21st century with smart insights that eradicate manual processes and provide unparalleled visibility into alcohol spend and buying behaviors – all to help grocers optimize business decisions. By utilizing the technology and smart data provided by Fintech, thousands of grocery stores across the country have learned to understand important details surrounding their alcohol purchases, allowing them to control costs, protect their margins, and grow profits. To learn more, visit FinTech
Melinda A. Johnson, Fintech Marketing Specialist
Fintech, the leading business solutions provider for the beverage alcohol industry, offers a OneSource® solution for beverage alcohol management built to empower alcohol suppliers, distributors, and retailers with actionable data. With decades of industry experience and knowledge, paired with unwavering dependability and trust, Fintech continues to lead the development of technologies built to increase margins and maximize operating efficiencies for anyone who sells alcohol. From product ordering, invoice management and reconciliation, and data reporting, to pricing and promotion communication, sales strategy, payment compliance adherence, and regulatory resource connectivity, Fintech delivers strategic, integrated solutions that connect over half a million business relationships nationwide.