Archived Our instocks team is the reason we are red...

[AssetsProtection]

Aside from 999 sales. No duplicate license plates or none of that mess dragging is down. Instocks is killing us. We have this guy doing like 1000 updates a month... Its driving me crazy I cant say anything to them because they would run and consider it coaching.My TL is acting on the problem since we just found it.. I would really like to see our department near green as possible in the next 2 months... How are your instocks team numbers?

 

[That Dude who Does Stuff]

I'm not fully sure how In-stocks affects AP, unfortunately, as I haven't had the opportunity to discuss the matter with my ETL-AP. From an internal standpoint, my store's instocks team is quite good. We get through our workload, every day, which wasn't the case a few months ago, and we work with AP/relevant TLs when doing the drastic count change reports, and recover the product on said reports more often than not.

If you don't mind, how do we affect AP, and what's the best way we can make life easier for AP?

 

[AssetsProtection]

I'm not fully sure how In-stocks affects AP, unfortunately, as I haven't had the opportunity to discuss the matter with my ETL-AP. From an internal standpoint, my store's instocks team is quite good. We get through our workload, every day, which wasn't the case a few months ago, and we work with AP/relevant TLs when doing the drastic count change reports, and recover the product on said reports more often than not.

If you don't mind, how do we affect AP, and what's the best way we can make life easier for AP?

Count Updates by department .. If you have a person not so good in instocks. (Dropping counts not looking in multiple locations ect ect)it hurts us. Also I cant just blame the instocks team. If said person goes to one location and On hands says 10 but there are only 5 in the home location at the time. The other 5 may just be behind merch from a bad zone.. but still.. someone doing 1000 count updates per month is bad.

 

[That Dude who Does Stuff]

That does seem awfully high.

We have it set up such that we have people who scan the same areas regularly so we develop planogram familiarity to avert peghook facing/multiple location issues, and I've been working on getting us to take reshop/zone issues into account more effectively. It's really hard to get an accurate scan when there are really bad zones/lots of reshop.

How much experience does that one person have? And does the TL of that department know? Even if you can't do something, the TL - in an ideal world - should be more than happy to help you. If not, are there any TMs that act as leaders in the department? Those are good people to seek out too.

 

[Rock Lobster]

Count Updates by department .. If you have a person not so good in instocks. (Dropping counts not looking in multiple locations ect ect)it hurts us. Also I cant just blame the instocks team. If said person goes to one location and On hands says 10 but there are only 5 in the home location at the time. The other 5 may just be behind merch from a bad zone.. but still.. someone doing 1000 count updates per month is bad.

I don't know the person so its hard to judge... I know some stores just have bad zones, bad operations (ie plano), bad logistics processes etc... which will cause the instocks team to have increased count updates as well! They are just doing their job and scanning... If it is legit not there, its difficult to figure out the issue because by the time AP goes to follow up on it, the zone has been fixed, the random flat of freight was found and worked, the reshop cart got put away etc... so when you come through it appears like the Instocks team just wasn't payin attention!

 

[calimero]

I do research in my area ( cosmetic ) ,I help set planogram ,reset ,I am the one who does reshop for it ,and the push on flow team !
I take care of it 5 days a week with zone and clean up !
I know it by heart ,it helps that I am dedicated and that my stl gives me the hours for it ! It is clean ,zoned ,and rarely do we have a miscount ! I have a good relationship with the tl,and the hba backroom tm .we work as a team ,which is lacking in other dept !

 

[researchr]

That does seem awfully high.

We have it set up such that we have people who scan the same areas regularly so we develop planogram familiarity to avert peghook facing/multiple location issues, and I've been working on getting us to take reshop/zone issues into account more effectively. It's really hard to get an accurate scan when there are really bad zones/lots of reshop.

How much experience does that one person have? And does the TL of that department know? Even if you can't do something, the TL - in an ideal world - should be more than happy to help you. If not, are there any TMs that act as leaders in the department? Those are good people to seek out too.

We do this also. It works well for us. That being said, the drastic sount report after a rescan day is HUGH! Half of it or more turns out to be zoning issues, another percentage is unlocated in the back room. An amazing amount of stuff is stolen. What is with the men's razors?

 

[researchr]

Count Updates by department .. If you have a person not so good in instocks. (Dropping counts not looking in multiple locations ect ect)it hurts us. Also I cant just blame the instocks team. If said person goes to one location and On hands says 10 but there are only 5 in the home location at the time. The other 5 may just be behind merch from a bad zone.. but still.. someone doing 1000 count updates per month is bad.

Is that from the drastic count report or regular research?

 

[AssetsProtection]

Is that from the drastic count report or regular research?

I don't know about research but I know it would from any type of count update.

 

[That Dude who Does Stuff]

Research done in stand alone and the instocks application will change the counts.

So, I did some digging today, figured out how the shortage indicator is calculated. It's $ amount of the change in counts divided by the $ amount of monthly sales. So, if your team is like mine and went from scanning ~ 30% of the store to 100%, your instocks team is now scanning 3x the product value they were before, while sales have stayed fairly constant.

The emphasis is to be exceptionally accurate now. Being cognizant of reshop, aware of what is and what isn't being pushed, double checking for zone issues, following up with AP on the drastic, etc.

 

[researchr]

So if instocks is scanning the entire store every day and you are looking at all changed counts..considering there are about 550 tasks a day..how can 1000 count changes per month be excessive? Especially if they are not drastic changes?

 

[Rarejem]

Sounds like the problem is more with your zoners than your instocks team. An accurate zone is essential to good research. Our instocks team is told to scan and to do so with the understanding that the other teams have done their jobs accurately. If you are having that many problems with count changes (and those changes are accurate for the day scanned) your other teams are not doing their job. Don't blame the messenger.

 

[That Dude who Does Stuff]

So if instocks is scanning the entire store every day and you are looking at all changed counts..considering there are about 550 tasks a day..how can 1000 count changes per month be excessive? Especially if they are not drastic changes?

Because the metric isn't a ratio of 'dollar amount of counts changed' over 'total scans.' It's 'dollar amount of counts changed' over 'dollar amount of total sales'. When the numerator of a ratio goes up, but the denominator stays the same...what were once high yellow metrics become flaming hot red.

IS can minimize the damage by trying to look for bad zoning and being aware of what reshop is still in carts and by changing counts of expensive items very, very cautiously, but...that's just triage, tbh. The way the metric is calculated is stupid.

 

[AssetsProtection]

Research done in stand alone and the instocks application will change the counts.

So, I did some digging today, figured out how the shortage indicator is calculated. It's $ amount of the change in counts divided by the $ amount of monthly sales. So, if your team is like mine and went from scanning ~ 30% of the store to 100%, your instocks team is now scanning 3x the product value they were before, while sales have stayed fairly constant.

The emphasis is to be exceptionally accurate now. Being cognizant of reshop, aware of what is and what isn't being pushed, double checking for zone issues, following up with AP on the drastic, etc.

I don't change counts so I forgot standalone research does that.

 

[chevalier]

It's Target. Everything here is red.