Sainsbury’s speedier plan for private label development
U.K.-based grocery retailer J. Sainsbury plc, a partner in the San Francisco-based GlobalNetXchange, expects to cut 11 weeks out of the product development cycle for house brands using GNX’s new web-based Collaborative Product Development solution, reports John Padgett, general manager of B2B development for Sainsbury. The typical production cycle from formulation of product to on the shelf is 20 to 40 weeks, he says.
The company believes the workflow and specification management tool developed specifically with Sainsbury for private label grocery products will produce a 50% reduction in time to market‹which produces a 20% increase in revenue because products will have longer life cycles--and a 30% reduction in costs. Sainsbury is so sure the solution will work better than the former manual process that it’s planning to develop 3,000 products this year using the CDP solution, says Padgett.
Padgett says the online collaboration software connects up to 12 parties at three organizations involved in creating a new grocery product, including at Sainsbury, the suppliers and the manufacturer. About 900 suppliers are involved in the Sainsbury program for the development of such products as beer, skincare products and frozen foods--all of which center around the use of a recipe, which the CPD system is specially designed to handle.
"Using Internet technology is a fantastic tool for collaboration. All the parties involved in product development can see one document that is being built up literally in front of their eyes," Padgett says. "The whole process of development is broken down into tasks and a time scale is put on those tasks so we have a predetermined workflow. This gives us much more control over the products. With tasks being assigned a time period, we’ll get new products to the store shelves much faster."
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