Smiths News is committed to providing industry leading copy management solutions. Substantial investment has been, and continues to be, made by the business in the areas of forecasting/supply management, sales development and service excellence to ensure we are seen as the preferred wholesaler of choice for both publishers and retailers.

Our goals of the business are as follows:

• Meet the needs of publishers by delivering improved supply chain efficiency through both high levels of availability and reductions in waste
• Meet the needs of retailers by delivering improved category profitability
• Deliver sales growth to our trading partners through our bespoke sales development offer
• Create a clear performance and service differential in benchmarked performance measures vs our competitors
• Deliver a market leading Sales Based Replenishment offer that delivers material benefits to retailer and publisher customers
• To lead the industry by the implementation of innovative supply management applications across our best in class technology and information platforms.

Forecasting and copy allocation

Our magazine copy management offer is currently delivered through our centralised Magazine Sales Centre in Worcester. The team at Worcester work with publishers to manage the break down of national supply figures to individual store allocations of every one of over 40,000 issues we handle each year.

The key elements of our copy management offer are:

• Flexible segmentation and retailer clustering platform facilitating bespoke offers by publisher / retail channel to get the optimum shape of distribution for each title.
• Base forecast net sale methodology based on last six issues moving weighted average for each retailer / title combination to place copy where it is most likely to sell.
• Application of publisher promotions and sales initiatives based on latest sales data, historical promotional data or seasonal peaks in demand.
• Range management system that ensures a very high compliance >99% to retailer ranges for copy allocation and allows the management of any range exceptions. Mandatory and optional ranges are held for all retail multiple groups either at Multiple store grade level or where required down to store specific level.
• Sales development activity across publisher portfolios to capitalise on sales opportunities and market trends
• Dedicated retail sales development team structured to deliver optimised sales performance within the key retail channels including the management of new selling point and store refit opportunities
• Seasonality and events management process: maximising sales and ensuring an efficient operation throughout the year is particularly challenging in areas subject to seasonal variance or when major events occur. Seasonal customers are identified within the allocation system and managed against seasonal trends and year-on-year performance. In addition, there is a field offer in place to increase sales of the key seasonal retailers, and those only open for a limited period, such as camps. This offer includes range and space advice tailored to their sales profile

The copy allocation system has the flexibility to forecast and allocate retail supply volumes to any given criteria. Past history of issue sales at times of promotion, issue exclusive or event down to retail multiple channel or individual retail level are all within SAP’s capabilities.

Retailers can be segmented in any way to match the supply management approach to deliver the circulation objectives of the title.  Segmentation can be defined on a wide range of retailer attributes including banded approaches to sales or volatility to maximise sales and minimise unsolds and manage pre-planned promotions or increased demand on issues influenced by differing advertising platforms.

The retailer has the chance to influence their own supply by making changes either through the Smiths News regionalised customer service teams or via our B2B web portal, Connect2U, alterations are then validated as part of the allocation process.