PlanoHero and Korzinka Chain: how to Automate the Planogramming Process, Saving Time and Budget?

Effective merchandising is the backbone of sales. When we talk about merchandising, we mean placing categories inside the store and products on the shelves to attract customers’ attention to make purchases and cross all the departments the store has. Successful merchandising requires careful planning, clear implementation, correct execution, and effective analysis and control.

Let’s figure it out. How long does it take for a planogram specialist to manually create planograms? Does it take half a day? Or the whole working day? What if we cut this time more than two times using special digital solutions? Modern technologies in retail allow optimizing and automating of all merchandising processes. Savings over the year will be significant.

The Ukrainian service PlanoHero provides cloud-based retail solutions tools for automating planogramming processes in 17 countries worldwide. This is a platform for improving all merchandising processes, cutting time and costs for printing planograms. With PlanoHero you can control department costs and increase employee productivity (FTE). All this is possible using a single connected platform with web-based parts, advanced rules for automatic planogram creation, and mobile applications for store managers. And also for gathering product sizes with the advanced analytical module, and control block.

The PlanoHero is a real retail-focused platform for automating the planogramming process: starting from floor plan level up to planogram creation and store managers’ execution control.

Our current client, chain «Korzinka» – the key chain in Uzbekistan, shared their own practical experience in integrating and working experience with PlanoHero.

Supermarket Chain «Korzinka» – it is more than 90 supermarkets in 9 regions of Uzbekistan – more than 7500 employees. Shohislom Isaev, Merchandising Development Manager of «Korzinka» supermarket chain: “Anglesey Food was founded in 1996 and has become one of the first chains in retail supermarket format in the Republic of Uzbekistan. At first, the stores operated under the Anglesey Food brand label in a convenience store format. In 2005, it was decided to rebrand the company. This marked the beginning of the development of the chain under the «Korzinka» brand label.

Now the supermarket chain «Korzinka» has 94 supermarkets in 9 regions of Uzbekistan. By 2025, it is expected to increase the number of stores to 150. Our brand has a well-deserved reputation among customers. The fact that says a lot — the word «Korzinka» has become a common noun in everyday life to denote the concept of a supermarket”.

«Korzinka» Supermarket Chain and the PlanoHero Service Integration Project 

Attracting and retaining a customer is the main task for every retailer. On-shelf availability of products and smart layout stimulate sales. In order to manage the layout effectively, the retail chain «Korzinka» decided to integrate with PlanoHero.

The purpose is a customized planogramming automation process and efficient big data analysis to understand and track results.

Shohislom Isaev, Merchandising Development Manager of «Korzinka», says that they developed the Service Integration Project RoadMap^“Together with the PlanoHero team, we clearly defined the key points for the successful implementation and effective use of the service. The expertise and experience of our colleagues from PlanoHero played a significant role.”

The PlanoHero service provides the opportunity to set up the entire merchandising process on a single platform:

• make a store floor plan and equipment library;
• create planograms with different cluster product layout options;
• create customized own layout rules and apply them in different stores for automatic planogram creation;
• set tasks for the planogram implementation and send them to managers in stores;
• control the planogram execution using photo reports;
• analyze layout, sales, and customer behavior.

Why PlanoHero?

Shohislom Isaev shares further how the chain built planograms before and what was the impetus for integration with PlanoHero:

“Before the integration with PlanoHero, merchandising was carried out manually without in-store layout control. And the staff in the stores did the merchandising based on the knowledge acquired during the initial training period.

The number of chain stores increased, so there was a need to automate the entire merchandising process and control the in-store layout. We were also interested in getting digital data to analyze shelf space and determine the in-store customer trip.”

The PlanoHero service allows analyzing sales, assortment, and stock, determining the effectiveness of trade area usage to improve the layout, and getting reports on customer traffic with hot/cold zones analysis.

Why did we choose PlanoHero? First of all the service met all our requirements:

• Expertise.
• Ensuring efficiency in all merchandising processes.
• Flexibility in collaboration.
• Openness to product improvement.
• Best value for money.

How Is the Planogramming Process Set Up Now?

“Almost every department in «Korzinka» supermarket chain uses the service, as PlanoHero provides capabilities that cover the tasks of the operations, sales, and marketing departments.

Thanks to technical support from PlanoHero’s experts, the chain’s departments learned the service functionalities in a short time. The retail chain now applies automation tools for effective merchandising, and the PlanoHero team provides support for all processes.

Now the main task of the planogramming department is automating planograms based on layout rules module usage.”

Layout rules module is one of the key PlanoHero solution part. The functionality allows users to create their own customized, advanced rules for automatic shelves planograms creation and applying them in any cluster of stores or for any single store.

Specialists of the planogramming department manage the layout using the solution: they create planograms, send them to retail stores and control the layout.

After Integration with PlanoHero. Chain Processes Optimization and the Way to Issues Solving

PlanoHero service has fully covered the chain’s merchandising goals.

“No need to print out planograms. Ready-made planograms are sent to the stores directly from the solution. With the PlanoHero Layout mobile application, the merchandiser in the store receives detailed information about the planograms in different formats. This is a 2d model of the planogram and the ability to see the layout in augmented virtual reality, as well as in the table form view. After the planograms were executed in the stores, managers send photo reports of the layout to the central office.

After the service was implemented in «Korzinka» chain, the following was achieved:

• saving time for planogram creation;
• using Library planograms of the same size and store format;
• sending planograms to stores in one click;
• receiving photo reports of realograms within the set deadlines.”

What Has Changed Since the Integration?

The entire merchandising process has gone digital. Necessary data is digitized and available for analysis. The efficiency of the team has increased due to the automation of the planogram creation process. This creates an opportunity to identify new opportunities for growth and implement them.

“Planogramming automation helped to connect all processes and improve communication between the central office and chain stores using the same, single PlanoHero solution. First of all, the process has become more simple and more clear for the employees in stores. Before integration, the main problems were planogram execution and control in stores. The merchandising department put a lot of efforts into creating floor plans and shelf planograms. After integration with PlanoHero and fixing, improving the process of planogram sending and control, we can talk about increasing our profit, or rather savings, which allowed us to save around $10,000 of the budget”, – said Shokhislom Isaev.

Besides automating the whole merchandising process in the chain, there is an improvement in the quality of analytics and planograms execution control.

Owing to the service notification system, the merchandising department observes changes in the assortment, receiving up-to-date notifications:

• New active products are not placed but should be placed on live layouts.
• New inactive products should be deleted from the current valid planograms.
• The service automatically identifies and reports product holes on planograms (the products that are placed on planograms and have zero stock).

Results of PlanoHero Service Implementation 

1. Fast standard planograms and customized layout rules for different store types creation.
2. Smart execution of planograms and effective control of chain stores.
3. Increasing the efficiency of the entire team through communication between departments.
4. Layout analytics, automatic tracking of assortment changes, sales dynamics, and customer traffic (hot/cold zones) analysis.
5. Around $10,000 saving.
6. Increased chain competitiveness.

23 Retailers in 17 countries are already automating the planogramming process and improving their trade area usage effectiveness and sales performance with the PlanoHero.

Make the whole planogramming process two times faster!