How to Pitch SupplyPike to Your Boss

Welcome to SupplyPike! We’re glad you’re here and enjoying our software. We have worked diligently to create easy-to-use, time-saving solutions. Now that you’ve experienced these benefits, you may be wondering how to help your leadership team decide to take the next step.

Here is a how-to guide on speaking with your boss on purchasing SupplyPike’s software solutions.

Explain your needs

What are your specific needs, and what are the needs of the company? Your leadership may not even know there were issues in the first place. Often, executives don’t realize how much time their staff spends analyzing spreadsheets, how much money they are losing to Walmart deductions, or how third parties are severely impacting their On Time In Full (OTIF) scores. 

Focus on your most basic needs and how SupplyPike has met them. Your leadership will appreciate both your efforts and your desire to be more productive and efficient.

Here’s your chance to let your leadership know the nitty-gritty details of doing business with Walmart. Lacking visibility into your replenishment cycle, for example, can create out-of-stocks and therefore lost sales. Deductions from invoices can add up, impacting the company’s bottom line. Not knowing what is causing compliance issues can lead to further fees.

You also need your time back. It takes time to pull data from Retail Link, analyze it, and present it in a digestible way. It takes time to gather documentation and go through the dispute process. It takes time to track down accountability when Walmart levies OTIF fines.

Focus on your most basic needs and how SupplyPike has met them. Your leadership will appreciate both your efforts and your desire to be more productive and efficient.

Show me the money!

Numbers are a fantastic way of showing results. Did you go from spending hours pulling data from Retail Link to creating reports in seconds? Have you won back large sums of money by quickly disputing deductions? Can you show a direct cause of this month’s compliance fees? As they say in Jerry McGuire, “Show me the money!”

Our solutions are available on a month-to-month basis, so there’s no risk.

Each of our solutions includes the ability to export data, and our sales team can help you present that data to your leadership. Additionally, our app has a screenshot feature that allows you to capture the full page or the viewable area so that you can share graphs and your user experience.

Don’t forget the price! Retail Intelligence saves you valuable time, Deductions Navigator gets your money back, and OTIF Radar pinpoints root causes to prevent fines. Additionally, our solutions are available on a month-to-month basis, so there’s no risk. Of course, we offer a discount for annual contracts and if you get all three products.

Change is inevitable

As Heraclitus said, “Change is the only constant in life.” Humans have survived for thousands of years on the basis that we adapt. In terms of running a business, change is the only path to growth. That’s the goal, right? 

With change comes new functionality, more features, and time savings.

SupplyPike has endeavored to change the world of retail forever. We understand that you may know a hundred Retail Link recipes for pulling specific data, and it may feel weird not to have to spend all your time refreshing the reports page, waiting for your sales summary to show up. 

You’ll need to show your leadership that change is a good thing. With change comes new functionality, more features, and time savings. Change often starts at the bottom, so showing you can adapt to new ideas (and want to) will help your leadership see the benefits.

How to pitch each of SupplyPike’s products

SupplyPike comprises three products: Retail Intelligence, Deductions Navigator, and OTIF Radar. Each product fulfills a particular need, and you’ll likely want to show how each product helps you.

Retail Intelligence

If you’re working for a Walmart supplier, you’re probably spending vast amounts of time in Retail Link and creating macro-ridden spreadsheets with complex pivot tables. Your company may even have spent thousands of dollars on Retail Link classes. Switching to SupplyPike Retail Intelligence means never having to go to Decision Support again. 

Switching to SupplyPike Retail Intelligence means never having to go to Decision Support again. 

Ever spend a Sunday night working on a new quarterly sales report, and Retail Link just goes down? Retail Intelligence will promptly deliver that report to your inbox at 8 AM on Monday. Do you need to present a high-level overview of your demand plan? Use Retail Intelligence to create a PDF presentation. Do you need to know which store is low on one particular product? Create a drill-down metric that will show you the store information and the product’s traited and valid details.

We timed it. It takes at least 3 hours to pull all the data necessary to recreate our Monday Morning Report in Retail Link (assuming Retail Link is up and running). It can take 4 hours to create an SSO from scratch. To pull data to produce a report on new store opportunities takes 6 hours. Retail Intelligence does all of this in seconds.

There are a few things you can show your leadership to demonstrate the value of Retail Intelligence. Compare a recipe you have to follow in Retail Link with the ease of creating a customized dashboard displaying attractive graphs and digestible numbers. Show them the macro-laden spreadsheet Walmart uses for Store-Specific Orders (SSOs) and compare it with our SSO Generator, while describing the length of time it takes for you to calculate the warehouse packs, etc.

Retail Intelligence manages the data so that you can manage the business.

Express to your leadership how Retail Intelligence has helped you provide valuable insights and recommendations to your growth team. Explain that Retail Intelligence manages the data so that you can manage the business.

Retail Intelligence

Deductions Navigator

As you know, Walmart has dozens of obscure deduction codes it uses to explain why it didn’t pay you in full. Does your leadership know how much money your company loses each month or year to deductions? Do they know how many of these deductions are disputable?

Deductions Navigator provides powerful insights into your deductions activity.

Deductions Navigator provides powerful insights into your deductions activity. You can use the dashboard to see every cent deducted instantly and how much is actionable. You can customize the dates to display how much your company lost over a specified period. There are also charts that show the trends of your deductions.

Did you use to struggle with EDI, 3PL web portals, and APDP to dispute just one deduction? Show your leadership the messy undertaking you’d have to go through without our software, and then show them the document retrieval feature, making disputes a snap.

You’re also likely writing off those low-dollar deductions because it takes so long to go after them. What’s $50 here, $60 there? Use the Dashboard to show the number of small deductions that you usually skip. Describe how Deductions Navigator’s one-click disputes let you go after all deductions.

Deductions Navigator’s one-click disputes let you go after all deductions.

Definitely make sure they know SupplyPike’s monthly pricing model. We do not take a percentage of your recovered dollars. That’s all your money. 

Deductions Navigator

OTIF Radar

Every Walmart supplier must comply with its strict On Time In Full policies, every month or else face hefty fines up to 3% of your cost of goods sold (COGS) from Walmart. Unlike Walmart deductions, OTIF fines are typically not disputable. They are, however, preventable.

OTIF Radar allows you to put proactive measures in place to prevent those costly fines and raise your score.

Now, as you know, you can see your OTIF scorecard in Retail Link. What does it tell you? Sadly, not much beyond a brief summary. Your OTIF compliance is far more than that. OTIF Radar allows you to put proactive measures in place to prevent those costly fines and raise your score.

First, show your leadership the OTIF Radar dashboard, which displays a historical breakdown of OTIF performances and fines, current OTIF metrics scores without Walmart’s accountability, and projected fines for advanced notice of upcoming issues. Then, go to the Analysis tab and show them how, say, a particular product impacted your compliance and fees. Really drill down deep into the data by clicking on the graph for a specific item number and show how it performed over the past year.

OTIF Radar stores your data indefinitely, whereas OTIF data in Retail Link disappears after three weeks.

Let your leadership know that a broad view of these trends isn’t possible to track using Retail Link. OTIF Radar stores your data indefinitely, whereas OTIF data in Retail Link disappears after three weeks. Describe the rabbit hole you had to follow to find even one aspect of the supply chain that could have caused compliance issues.

OTIF Radar

Next steps

The next step is to schedule a demo with your leadership team and our product experts. You can also create an account and integrate your data securely, which takes less than 3 minutes.

If you get stuck or need guidance, please feel free to reach out to our customer development team. If there is a particular aspect of our software you want to highlight but aren’t sure how to, let us know. We’re here to help.