How MFG’s new retail data solutions have proven a game changer for FULFIL Nutrition

DATE: 31 January, 2022 // BACK TO ARCHIVE »

Summary

MFG’s partnership with Talysis Ltd has revolutionised its ability to provide retail data to its suppliers. This has enabled FULFIL Nutrition to receive unprecedented levels of data clarity, granularity, and insight into their brand and category performance within MFG.

Background

Launched in 2016, Irish healthy snacking company FULFIL Nutrition continues to go from strength-to-strength, with huge growth momentum and considerable brand investment. Its range of vitamin and protein bars are sold across the UK’s largest independent forecourt operator Motor Fuel Group (MFG), which has a portfolio of over 900 forecourt outlets. However, whilst MFG had a wealth of retail sales data from across its portfolio, its usability was limited as a result of its complex nature and inconsistent systems and reporting structures meaning the only performance data available to FULFIL was their internal “sales in” to MFG.

Solution

Retail data specialists Talysis were appointed as MFG’s exclusive data partner in March 2021. Talysis partnered with MFG to cleanse and segment the data from across the group ensuring it is consistent and accurate, and to create easy-to-use tools which enable suppliers to quickly uncover insights from the wealth of data available. The resulting suite of data solutions include category insight and trend reporting suites, store level performance, highlighting gaps and opportunities, transactional and basket insight tools, plus insight into the ever-growing Uber Eats business. Each solution delivers access to unprecedented levels of data clarity, granularity, and insight for MFG and its suppliers such as FULFIL.

Benefits

In May 2021 FULFIL signed up to the first solution to launch – the category insight and trend reporting suite. Charles Conder, National Account Manager at FULFIL, has detailed some of the key benefits they have provided for his business:

The data we now receive is hugely beneficial. Previously we could only see MFG’s purchase data of FULFIL products from the wholesaler. Now we have visibility of sales out data for the full category, including competitor products, provided to us in an easy-to-use format and importantly available in a timely fashion. With data updated every four weeks we can use this for both future strategic planning as well as more immediately in terms of tactical planning, such as promotional activity for the same year.

The reports are easy to use, and therefore get used! The accuracy and integrity of the data is really important to us, and now with all products classified correctly and consistently across the group, including new products and those delisted, it inevitably results in more valuable insights.

The use of the data across our business is wide-reaching. We use it to understand promotional impact, gaining insight into which type of promotions perform best in our category or the impact of the location of a promotion for example. An example of this in action was a recent aisle end promotion which delivered a different set of results than would be expected. We could use the detailed data to discuss the performance with the Buyer ensuring a much more valuable conversation was held based on fact rather than assumptions.

We also use the data to understand ranging and influence decisions. How long are our competitors’ product tails? Which products deserve their space on shelf when space in store is valuable? Which are the best products to go on promotion? When discussing this with the Buyer it naturally leads to more valuable conversations to be able to talk from a category wide perspective, not just our own brand.

Finally, it’s also a fundamental benefit to be able to work closely with Talysis and share two-way feedback which ensures the data can be fine-tuned and is exactly what we need so we can derive the best possible value from it, for us, MFG and the category.