Do your team members possess the essential Excel skills for basic tasks? Excel stands as a crucial tool for analysts, sales professionals, category managers, and business individuals at large. While it might seem that everyone is familiar with Excel, the reality is different. Without foundational Excel skills, sales teams and category managers struggle to analyze their business effectively, administrators face challenges in creating comprehensive worksheets, and analysts may find fundamental concepts difficult to grasp. Additionally, there's the risk of errors and incorrect conclusions stemming from poorly constructed formulas and PivotTables. You might wonder, with automated reports available, why is Excel training necessary for organizations? The answer lies in the limitations of automated reports—they can't meet all needs. Meaningful analysis often requires data manipulation, cutting, formatting, and customization, necessitating strong foundational Excel skills. Consider a recent scenario where a client approached me about providing Excel skills training for their sales team. A sales manager had expressed concern about the team's inability to perform essential Excel tasks like formula writing, building PivotTables, and creating charts. Despite the assumption that everyone knows Excel, this proficiency was lacking. In response, I crafted a virtual training session covering Excel basics, including spreadsheet navigation, data sorting, formula writing (SUM, COUNT, RANK, UNIQUE), and creating charts and PivotTables. The session was optional, allowing those with existing proficiency to choose whether to attend. RESULTS? Due to high interest, I conducted two 3-hour sessions. The hands-on exercises focused on relevant scenarios for the sales team, incorporating data and item rank reports. Participants not only learned to create formulas but also gained insights into interpreting different KPIs. We used one of their extensive automated reports to build a practical PivotTable, bridging the gap between learning and application. Feedback from the sessions speaks volumes: "Best 3-hour lecture/class I’ve attended." "Time went by way too quickly!" "I learned many new things, i.e., formula building, shortcuts, and the importance of being clear on what I’m trying to say." "Handouts were helpful, and I will go back to reference them." Ask your team if they need Excel basics training! The response might surprise you. Learn more about Excel Virtual Team Training

As we kick off this new year, there may be obstacles in your category plans that can unknowingly limit your category results. These obstacles exist for many retailers because their category analytics and plan development haven’t kept pace with some of the biggest disruptors in the industry – including data, the changing shopper and the changing marketplace. If you don't change your strategies, processes and thinking to consider these changes, and don’t open up to new perspectives and ideas, your biggest growth opportunities can be completely overlooked. Below I’ve captured some examples of potential barriers that may be limiting your growth:

The direction you need to achieve your goals. You’ve completed a category review or category assessment, ultimately identifying your biggest areas of opportunity to help you achieve your target goals and objectives in the category. Now what?

Note: This content is part of our new eBook on Category Management with Limited Data. Feel free to read and share.

In case you haven’t heard … Things have changed! It’s time to face the facts. Our industry and category management have been evolving for awhile (decades, actually). And, although change can be hard to overcome, attendance at our live webinars last week for both Retail and Manufacturing organizations, as well as Solutions Providers confirm that awareness of the changes ahead is growing — and concerning to both practitioners and leaders alike. Here’s why it’s time to face the facts and consider category management mastery …

Category Management Executives (including Directors, VPs and Managers) Face a Common Dilemma How to get from where you are, to where the industry is going … Here’s what you need to know:

Category Management has become more sophisticated. It’s now CatMan 2.0™ — Are you adapting to more advanced approaches? Are you keeping up with competitors? the industry? Category management has been evolving and changing since its launch in the late 1980s. The changing Shopper, blurring channels, omni-channel, the Internet & digital media and more advanced data & technology are the key drivers that have continued to change category management. It’s not that all of these changes are necessarily NEW, but all of these changes have all recently been captured in one place — in a new advanced approach which is creating buzz, questions, and uncertainty. In this blog, I’ll cover: Why CatMan 2.0™ is important (and more importantly, why you should care), Where some of the biggest changes are, and Next steps to help you plan your 2017.

“We don’t practice category management in our company / region / industry.” It might surprise you that I’ve heard a version of this statement several times in the past few weeks. But the bigger surprise is that even in non-category management worlds, the principles of category management are being used, even though they could be improved for the benefit of both Retailers and Manufacturers around the globe. Whether you call it category management or not, you might be missing the boat if you answer YES to any of the following questions:

Category Management and Shopper Insights/Shopper Marketing have parted ways in many organizations. Shopper Marketing reports to Marketing. Category Management reports to Sales. According to new industry standards, this is not the best way to set your organization up for Shopper success.

Data investments can be in the millions of dollars for organizations. ROI requires using it wisely — here’s how: If you’re like most organizations, you are purchasing more data than ever before, sometimes making decisions on what to purchase without creating necessary standards on when or how to use it to your advantage, but proudly adding it to the portfolio of data that your organization now has access to. Are you maximizing big data? Read on to discover the 4 requirements for Retailers and Suppliers / Manufacturers to maximize data investments.