Recapping QuickMods

Recapping QuickMods 
 
Melodie Hays: All right, so you have myself, I am the VP of marketing here at SupplyPike. I'm going to be here to help you, pitch any questions you have to Peter. And Peter is our content coordinator here at SupplyPike. So he is the one who generates all of these awesome webinars for you guys, talks to industry leaders, puts it all together. 
 
Super excited to have him here today to help Lee lead you guys through QuickMods. So our agenda for today is we're going to be going over what is item swap. So this is an initiative that we'll get into it, but more, or at least about a year ago. And then what is QuickMods, which is the V2 of item swap. 
 
What are the quick mod functions and what a funny little pun. And a skewed point of view. We'll dive into that. We will have some time at the end to just. Answer some general questions and discussions. And then if you guys wanna stay on past 12 we will be doing a sneak peek of one of our products called OTIF Radar. 
 
Give you guys a quick little peek into that. All right. Some FAQs. So will you get a copy of the slide deck? You will, you're going to see it in your inbox in three to four business days. We'll give you both a recording and a copy of the slide deck. Send that to you. If you don't see it, please reach out to us. 
 
Our emails are going to be at the end of this webinar and you can just email us, let us know. We've been getting a lot of questions as well lately. People have been. Been reaching back out to us, which is exciting. What is the best way to ask a question? So down at the bottom you're going to see a single little chat bubble that will say Chat. 
 
That is a really great way to engage with the entire group or make commentary on some of the slides that you're seeing. But if you have a question, please use the two bubbles that say q and a. That's just the easiest way for us to monitor that and make sure that we're getting to everyone in a timely manner. 
 
All right. Do you wanna take this one part Peter, or do you want me to take this one?  
 
Peter Spaulding: Sure, I can do this one. I love to talk about SupplyPike. We are a cloud-based company. We are a SaaS company, software as a service. And we're B two B, so we like to help suppliers retail suppliers. Try to maximize their growth by reducing their revenue loss. 
 
And the primary way that we got started doing that was through our deductions Navigator software, which helped people with AP deductions. And as we've grown, we've tried to become a more holistic kind of resource for. As many suppliers as possible. Some of the names that you see here below are our partners, and as I always like to say if you're not up there already, we'd love to see you there someday. 
 
All right, now let's dive into item swap a little bit. Yeah, as Melody mentioned already, It's hard to talk about QuickMods without talking about item swap. Item swap is was the stage one of QuickMods. As a kind of shelving initiative to to make it easier for merchants and buyers especially to run their stores and to give them a little bit more flexibility with with what's on the shelf at any given time. 
 
And this is a graphic that I love to use to introduce this subject generally. We have a totally normal looking shelf in Walmart, right? Wrong, incorrect. Not a totally normal looking shelf in Walmart. Or maybe normal, but not ideal, right? Out of stocks as we'll talk about in a little bit here, I. 
 
Out of stocks are the hot topic of today in retail and beyond retail and just the business world generally. But item swap was generated in the last couple years as a means of dealing with I. Out of stocks as efficiently as possible, especially from the Walmart side of things. How can we make it easier on merchants and on buyers to keep their shelves stocked at all times? 
 
So that was the kind of, I. That was the kind of initial situation, right? How can we improve on shelf availability. So we'll be going through the who, what, where, when, and why of item swap a little bit here today. And walk you through the kind of the fabric and the situation that kind of created the need for item swap as well. 
 
The older way, right? It Walmart relied on modulars that were pretty awkward and it was hard to get the timing right and there wasn't a lot of flexibility in that situation. So item swap was an opportunity to kind of exchange at the skew level on a modular right, so that modulars aren't having to be completely rewritten every time a change is made on the skew level, right? 
 
It is a micro modular reset. Without the hassle of line reviews or scheduling labor. So again, it's about trying to create a little bit more flexibility in the in the modular system. I. Here's a little graphic. This is a Walmart internal graphic that that they graciously shared with us that was actually used to describe Quick mod. 
 
So we'll show you the bigger picture of it later on. But here's the kind of the graphic representation of of item swap. The one for one exchange on a skew level. 
 
Okay. So where did this come from? This began in produce, I believe it was strawberries. Was the the. Beginning impetus of item swap. And it involved all UPCs, multiple UPCs can have a split supplier, right? How can we make sure that with something as as tumultuous right? As, as produce, right? Where there's all of this kind of change that's happening all the time. Keeping produce well stocked is central to that kind of part of the store, right? There's a lot of, there's a lot of turnover. On the skew and U p C level. So that's where Walmart internally started thinking, okay, how can we make this a little bit more flexible? 
 
And then of course the elephant in the global macroeconomic room covid out of stocks, right? Were a huge. A huge impetus in this process too. How can we make sure that whenever, let's say one item is completely sold out, right? How can we at least make sure that the shelves are well stocked and that Walmart customers are not walking into that situation that a lot of us had at the beginning of. 
 
The toilet paper section of Walmart is completely vacant, right? So that started creating a lot of other conversations in, in, in the supply chain world, the retail supply chain world and created the need for a lot of different changes. But from Walmart's perspective on the shelving level is one of these areas. 
 
How can we make sure that there's always something that's facing the customer. It started in produce, but then it grew out of that to a variety of other categories in the store, and now it is universal. 
 
So who can propose an item swap? This is where it gets tricky, right? Or one of the many places where it gets tricky just about everyone can. It's an initiative that was created really with buyers in mind. How can we make their jobs easier? But it can benefit suppliers as well. 
 
It can also be scary for some suppliers too Take it all with a kind of grain of salt. But in terms of actual proposals it can be anyone. Mostly buyers use item swap. But it can be proposed as a solution for your buyer. One thing to note too, that we'll probably be talking about quite a bit throughout the rest of the webinar just because it's created with buyers in mind does not mean that all buyers are aware of it, right? 
 
Not all buyers are aware of the, of these initiatives that are they're to make their lives easier again, Walmart is a really big entity and it's hard for them to have clear communication across these fronts. And this initiative is universal. It is something that can apply to all stores, at least in the continental us. 
 
I'm not sure if we have more information on that later on as well. But it is universal, but it is not universally known. So this may be a conversation that you want or do not want to have with your buyer at some point. And these, this is a big one, too big one to note. These changes can be presented at any time, right? 
 
There isn't the kind of gridlock that we saw with the older modular format where you have to get on the calendar and make sure that you've got these restocks coming in at the right times. Now there's a lot more flexibility. We'll get into some of the details and the nitty gritty of that as well. 
 
Private and name brand suppliers have seen success with item swap, right? It's not just a specific kind. Though again as you can probably imagine there are some who can benefit, some suppliers who can benefit from item swap more than others, right? Okay. These are the suppliers with limited use of item swaps. 
 
So again I've been using the term universal, but. There's a big, there's a lot of caveats there, right? And the major one is just that not all buyers are aware of item swap. And even if they are, not all of them will be as maybe comfortable using it as others. As well as QuickMods, which we'll be covering later. 
 
I. But the main kind of, I think, limiting factor in, in, in terms of these newer initiatives is lead time. So lead times can affect the purpose of item swap in a major way. Consider additional implications if you are in one of these. Categories committed by apparel, seasonal furniture, and non modularized items, obviously, right? 
 
And some of these are more self-explanatory than others. Furniture, for example, right? It's, you could think of it as the item opposite of produce, right? It's not something where you see this kind of massive turnover happening all the time. So flexibility may not be quite as important as well as with seasonal seasonal items. 
 
Those are already locked into the calendar, if you will. So having a certain amount of flexibility with those wouldn't even make as much sense. But being aware of that, of these limitations can be important as well. And obviously they're all associated with lead time and variable lead time. 
 
Okay, so what items can be swapped? Just about everything. It can be swapped regardless of brand, regardless of vendor. And that's a really, this is probably the big takeaway from this conversation that I would have for you guys. Relationships with buyers are really important. And as with any kind of, Business relationship, you want to maintain that at all costs. 
 
But one thing that I really want to harp on a lot today both with item swap and with QuickMods, is that, These are not these are not restricted to each vendor. So it's not like every vendor has this space locked down. And item swap can be very helpful internally. It can but it can also be helpful or unhelpful externally as well. 
 
So item swap and QuickMods are also initiatives used to generate more competition in the supplier, in the Walmart supplier world, for better or for worse. So being aware of that. Super important. If there's one thing that you, if there's one thing that you remember from this talk, that's the one that I would want it to be. 
 
Item swap. Items can be swapped regardless of vendor. And that applies to QuickMods as well. New innovation can replace existing items, right? So maybe there's something you guys are really excited about and you want to try it out earlier. That's some kind of internal item swap that you could use as well. 
 
SKUs with the like features can be swapped obviously, right? You'd want it to be. Not, something, not a completely different item that is, is irrelevant to all the other items next to it on the shelf. But as with like features those can be swapped as well. It is generally one for one, but can also be one for X. 
 
Okay. And this is where we're getting a little bit more into kind of the gray area between item swap and QuickMods, which we'll unpack a lot more as we go. Basically the general principle is whatever fits in the space can be swapped. Okay. And so we can see already the seeds of how QuickMods really is this kind of natural evolution of item swap. 
 
You can take this same principle and apply it in different areas as well. Now there are limits to QuickMods that we'll get into also. But for sure the one for one exchange is how we're gonna define or delit item swap right here. The one for X is implying the beginning of the new innovations that we see in QuickMods. 
 
And again, right? The idea behind this is flexibility. Flexibility for the buyer, letting the buyer have a little bit more room, a little bit more wiggle room to make decisions. That are best for the customer. So the customer is always facing items. So that's that's a the heart of it. 
 
The, that's the main kind of philosophy, if you will, of item swap and QuickMods. Okay. Where can item swap be applied? Oh, sorry. Getting ahead of myself. Item swap can be executed at any level depending on the needs of the swap again, right? There's the language of flexibility that's coming through. 
 
It can be applied on a single store level, a group of stores for example, the area of the country dcs or all stores in the us right? So again, Here's how this is, here's how this could have a variety of different effects for different suppliers, right? Some suppliers who are only in one store, for example will only be able to use, utilize that aspect of it, of course. 
 
But it can, it applies equally right across the whole spectrum of supplier sizes and and initiatives. It could be something that really has. Enormous consequences within a single C P G corporation, for example. Okay, where can't suppliers use item swaps? So this is what I was referring to earlier. 
 
Item swap only executes in US Walmart stores. So it is just the continental us. As far as we know, I believe QuickMods has the same limitations. I. Sam's Club, it does not apply. But there is, I think, a similar version of it. I'm not sure how recent that is. I'm not, I don't know anything about the history of that, what it's called. 
 
So if you're curious about that, let us know. We can dig into that a little bit more as well. But yeah, it is not the same thing as item swap or QuickMods. So it may follow, it may go by different rules. And you can imagine how different that would be given Sam's Clubs. The fundamental differences in the philosophy of Sam's Club as well as Walmart. 
 
So take all that with a grain of salt too. Walmart International, it's not, does not apply yet. And fulfillment centers. So maybe Walmart International is working on a similar thing. Maybe item swap and QuickMods, depending on its relative success. Maybe Walmart will look back five years from now and measure it and see, okay, how applicable could this be to Canada or other places. 
 
We'll see, right? So all of that remains to be seen, but as of now to the best of our most recent knowledge item swap and QuickMods are here in the continental us. Please let us know if you've heard anything different or if there's updates on any of those fronts as well. Okay. On shelf constraints of item swap. 
 
Item swap is flexible, but it is not entirely flexible. Okay. There are some kind of parameters within which item swap can work. Okay. So I. To get back to the beginning, to get back to that original graphic, right? It's the purpose of item swap is to never have an empty hole in the shelf, right? 
 
The whole purpose is to create this full shelf experience for Walmart's customers. Size is the biggest constraint of item swap though. And this is important and there are constraints to QuickMods as well. So whereas these constraints apply to item swap, we will talk about some constraints for QuickMods as well. 
 
QuickMods, expands item swap but it doesn't expand it infinitely. Okay, so we will, we'll get into that a little bit more later too. It must the item that you're wanting to switch that you're wanting to replace another item with must fit in the space of the old product existing in that slot. 
 
Okay. That's super important. Again, Walmart is not going to on a store level or larger level. Make more work for itself in order to accommodate a supplier, right? This is designed to help the buyer as efficiently as possible fill up that, that shelf space. Okay? So they're not gonna raise or lower shelves in order to fit a product in there. 
 
As good as it is, right? Exceptions can be made for flexible shelving space like pegs, right? But again, the emphasis here is. It's about making the lives of buyers easier and in-store employees too, right? So that's something that they're that they're wanting to emphasize as well. And QuickMods Josh Tubs, the kind of the kind of brains behind the organization of items swap and QuickMods was saying, It's QuickMods, right? 
 
The point is to keep things quick and efficient for Walmart and for customers, right? They're not gonna have, they don't want to have to make a whole bunch of work for their in-store employees as well. But exceptions can be made. So again, maybe the takeaway from there is when in doubt ask, item swap is about generating more flexibility. And it never hurts to ask or to have open communication with your buyer. Item swap is designed to fill in the gaps. Not redesign mods. So saying the same thing just in a different way, right? Item swap is about generating greater flexibility, but that flexibility is eliminated. 
 
Is limited by the amount of ease or not it creates for Walmart. So bearing all of that in mind, right? Maybe try to approach the buyer situation rhetorically, right? How can I phrase what I'm really looking for in a way that will actually make it seem like it is. It will make the buyer's life easier. 
 
That's the idea behind item swap. So maybe that could inform those interactions as well, if that makes sense. Okay. When can item swap be applied? Again, an enormous amount of flexibility. And this was the change that Walmart had in mind, right? 
 
Moving on from this rigid kind of calendar of modular updates or having to rewrite modulars altogether items can be applied at existing mod level and future mod level, right? So you can you can plan ahead. If you will items can be applied at shelf and be swapped to a feature or slide counter, right? 
 
So it's about creating more flexibility there as well. And there is technically no limit on the amount of item swaps. You're not limited by anything other than, again, what's best for the customer and what's best for the buyer, right? As much as buyers can handle it, they will. They will continue to swap items out. 
 
It just has to be worth it for operations, right? So that's the mantra that we, that I keep harping on, right? So process for setting up items, swap I. Reach out to your merchant again. As with so many of the things that we talk about, that relationship with the buyer is so important. 
 
You can get the item swap approved through that method. Set up the execution of an item swap, like a modular relay and manual markdown usually with the rest of the category. Okay It's like with everything else freeform, that's the goal, right? So item swap process for new items similar to modular relay process. 
 
Again, right? If the item exists in stores, there's little to no setup process. So you don't have to go back through that whole process again. If you've got something already set up in that situation. How does Walmart execute this initiative? Usually a new mod is generated and sent to the store. 
 
With item swap team leads will receive a task in their Walmart app. This means daytime store associates associates will be updating only this section that is being swapped. Items are moved to clearance or marked down with the rest of the modular. 
 
Okay, so again, it's about merchants, right? How they can use this, they can change or update promotional features, right? So this is a big thing as we were talking about before with with seasonal items and the right? Create they wanna be able to create best in class modulars, right? 
 
Again, with that flexibility, they want to be able to fight out of stocks, to be able to keep their stores constantly stocked to have their shelves full of items. They want to bring E-com performers to shelf, right? So that's a, another kind of complication or another kind of complicated part of the process. 
 
Get new suppliers on modular planning, right? So maybe there is some way that it can be beneficial or more beneficial to new suppliers. And they want to cancel mod relays entirely and execute only item swaps, right? So again, the flexibility. Alright, let's finally get into QuickMods. I want to emphasize the importance of understanding item swap before we get into QuickMods. The relationship between the two is complicated. We had a question submitted early where someone heard that item swap has been paused. I. And that's news to us. So maybe if you've heard anything about that, please let us know in the chat. My understanding was that item swap and QuickMods could coexist and work in the same way because they are essentially the same thing. 
 
Maybe what's happening though is that Walmart is phasing out item swap, or at least the language of item swap and replacing that with QuickMods. So again, if you've heard anything about that, please let us know. We're as curious as you are. But let's get into the, let's get into QuickMods proper. 
 
Okay. Walmart refers to this initiative as the next evolutionary step in the item swap process. Many suppliers and buyers are making requests of item swap that it couldn't sustain, right? So they liked the changes that Item swap was bringing to the modular world, but they realized that it could be more flexible already than item swap. 
 
Was, so for example, buyers have extra facings of an item on hand, right? And they want to get more of that out. Is that possible? We don't want to just do a one for one exchange. We want to do that one for X exchange. So here's the graphic that we'll be using to explain the change, explain the difference here. 
 
And this is super important. This is from Walmart internal. This is from the team that created both of these initiatives. It's legit. And we'll be diving into this a little bit more, but there's four functions within QuickMods rather than just the one with an item swap. And those four functions really briefly are reduce and add, reduce and swap, add and move, delete and expand. 
 
Okay. And we'll get into those here in just a little bit. Alrighty. So it's designed to be quick, not just for buyers and the home office, but also at the store level, as I've mentioned before, keeping the size requirements the same, helps the in-store shelving process remain somewhat straightforward while creating more flexibility in the whole rest of the process. 
 
Okay, so the kind of timelines and cadence again, right? There's no regular cadence. There is no timeline. These changes can be made at any point, right? Again, with creating more kind of competition and flexibility within the process. Approval change happens more on a merchant supplier basis than on a regular, weekly or monthly schedule. 
 
Okay? So maybe your maybe your merchant does things already on a weekly and monthly schedule. Then that wouldn't change, right? That would be a little bit more a little bit more regulated. But again, it's about giving merchants that flexibility if they want to make changes whenever they want. 
 
Okay. So here's a deep dive into the four main functions. I'll explain them a little bit. We'll go into the We'll look at the graphics a little bit too, and then we will review the graphic again at the end. Just as a kind of reminder, here they are, reduce an add, reduce and swap, add and move, delete and expand. 
 
Okay, so what is reduce an add, a particular item receives less facings, and those facings are replaced by an item of similar size and quantity. Okay. And that's the kind of main point. And here we have the graphic here, right? These blue water bottles. Maybe you've sold out of them. Maybe you're not happy with how they're performing, right? 
 
And you want to take them down and try out this, try out these green water bottles instead. That's the that's the graphic example. In some instances, merchants may have many extra facings of a given item. Perhaps the item wasn't as in demand as predicted, or issues in the supply chain have reduced. Its in-store availability. 
 
So again, this is a response to Covid. This is a response to the modern supply chain world. All right, reduce and swap. Similar and different, a reduction of one or more items along with the expansion or introduction of a new item or items, right? And here in this example, we have these two things, right? 
 
The orange water bottle and one of these blue clear bottles being replaced by three of these green items. Okay? Talk about flexibility. All right, that's a lot. That's a lot of flexibility. This function can work well if suppliers want to try to push a new facing early or fill in space of something that didn't do as well elsewhere, right? 
 
Okay, add and move our third function here. This one allows for items to be moved horizontally on a shelf to make room for new items. Okay, so here what we're seeing is the the dark blue bottles, the filled in bottles are moving to the left there and the orange bottle is getting replaced by that green coffee cup looking thing, right? 
 
With that, the idea of the flexibility that's being generated there is. We do have a horizontal motion on this shelf, we have a, a an X axis shift there for those dark blue water bottles. And that's important because vertical motion is not is not a thing. It's one of the only limitations within QuickMods of vertical motion y axis. 
 
Motion. Motion is not. Allowed. And why would vertical motion not be something that Walmart is excited about? Again, it makes things more difficult for their in-store employees, right? If you think about restocking those shelves if it's just a vertical motion it's much more simple. You don't have to, you don't have to integrate that other component. 
 
Now, is that something that's coming in the future? Maybe? Who knows? We'll just have to keep listening. Keep our ear to the ground for that. So a little bit more on add and move. This function is limited only to horizontal motion rather than vertical motion along the shelf space, as I just mentioned to keep restocking and reorienting quick for in-store employees. 
 
It is unlikely that Walmart will be motivated to add initiatives that complicate and or add time to any of their processes. Okay, again, I'm harping on that. This is an initiative created by Walmart to make things easier for their employees and to make items more accessible to the customer. What is delete and expand? 
 
Just like it sounds, it allows for merchants to easily delete an item and replace it with an existing item of, again, similar size there. What we have is the orange bottle and the dark blue bottles are of similar size, so I. That swab can be made in that way. Suppliers may be motivated to utilize this function if a particular item that does well can easily fill the space of a facing that is being sidelined. 
 
Okay? Again, pretty intuitive there. You're wanting to sideline the orange bottle so you can fill it in with something else that you know is doing well, those dark blue water bottles. Okay? And here's our review. Again this is something that you'll be getting this slide deck later on you don't need to. 
 
Excuse me, you don't need to screenshot this now. But if you this is something to study. It might be something that you want to distribute to your teams. And at the very least to be aware of not all suppliers are aware of this. Not all buyers are aware of this. And it's the people who are aware of these initiatives, who are at the bleeding edge of this really competitive industry. 
 
It's something to be aware of. Alright. No, I've been we've been talking in more general and philosophical terms, if you will, about what this kind of means for some suppliers rather than others. So that's what we want to touch on here. What are some takeaways and conclusions on a kind of. 
 
Individual c p g supplier level. And this is I believe this is some of my greatest work a skewed point of view. How can you how can you approach this issue by thinking on the skew level? I. Okay. So again, designed to make the buyer's level easier. This is the kind of relevance of QuickMods for buyers. 
 
It allows them to keep shelves fully stocked as much as possible. So they're motivated in that way too. The same thing is true ideally for in-store workers as well. Hopefully it's making their lives easier as we've talked about or at least that's the kind of, that's the logic behind the horizontal. 
 
Motion and not the vertical motion. That current limitation on QuickMods. QuickMods is also designed in part to allow for buyer flexibility to let the available space determine the SKUs on the shelf rather than the other way around, right? Sometimes it's easier to reverse that process. Okay, we've got this available space. 
 
Let's work on that. Let's focus on that rather than, What are these skews that I'm really interested in getting into my store? And the lead time is eight weeks. Super important to keep that in mind as well for QuickMods. Okay, so here's the relevance of this for sellers, right? And and suppliers. 
 
It benefits some and it could have big consequences for others not to be too much of a a doomsday or but this initiative has the potential to generate serious competition where there may not have been as much before. That's not necessarily, it doesn't necessarily mean that it benefits you. 
 
Bigger suppliers as opposed to smaller suppliers. Though it could in some instances, maybe in many but it does benefit the more flexible suppliers. Okay? So whatever that means. C b, G suppliers with a number of SKUs of around the same size, for example, could benefit, right? Maintaining their presence on shelves with adaptable changes while waiting on replenishment, right? 
 
Maybe if all of your skews are a different size, it wouldn't be as beneficial. On the other hand, c B G suppliers with a single skew or multiples of various sizes, as I was just mentioning, may have to tighten their supply chain and watch out for competitors trying to move in on that shelf space. 
 
Okay. 
 
So this will obviously make competitor research more important as well as supply chain efficiency. So stick around for OTIF radar. Afterwards. We'd love to, we'd love to pitch you that it's a product that we love given buyers busy schedules and the sheer massive of Walmart employees and initiatives. 
 
Not all buyers are aware of QuickMods. Not all buyers are aware of item swap, and we are not aware of whether both of those things are still happening at the same time. Because this is a huge, it's a huge endeavor. It's Walmart is a huge entity. And it can't be talked about in regular terms as a regular corporation. 
 
It's so large that it's hard to have complete congruity. I. Across all of their fronts. So QuickMods is a great initiative. Maybe it's there's a lot of buyers who could benefit from it, who have yet to even learn about it. And that, that may be an issue internally with Walmart. 
 
It may be just that buyers are really busy, some buyers are more busy and they don't have the time to actually go out and become aware of the initiatives that could make their lives easier. You guys are all aware of all this. I'm not telling you anything that you don't already know but if this is something that you think that your business could benefit from, right? 
 
This kind of flexibility, it may be to your benefit to bring this up with your buyer. It may not be something that all buyers are aware of. Okay, so this is a review some of the pros and cons. The pros. Some buyers may be more open to changes, right? It will benefit some CPGs with skews of a similar size. 
 
Some of the cons could be that, that increased flexibility could let some, could let in some of the competition, right? It could make life more difficult for suppliers with kinks and recurring issues in their supply chain. Obviously, And quick turnaround will likely be required if an item gets deleted by a buyer. 
 
Okay. Yeah flexibility wins in the modern game, right? Again, I'm not telling you guys anything that you don't know already. So I have a quick, I wanna turn this to you now, for those of you who are tuning in, right? Were you aware of QuickMods? How talked about is this issue among suppliers. 
 
Our first event that we did with Josh Tubbs was very well attended. But the news that was coming out at that time from Walmart itself was very surprising to a lot of suppliers. Please comment in the chat if you had heard something about this initiative before this webinar. Or if you haven't, is this new to you right now or is this something that you've heard about for months? 
 
Is this something that people are talking about or is this something that is completely I. Completely new to you, completely new to your business. How familiar were you with QuickMods? How familiar were you with Item Swap? Please let us know in the chat. It would be very helpful for us to just get a little bit of a sense of. 
 
How important is this initiative? Because again this initiative is very wide reaching in scope and in theory, like it's very ambitious. But maybe it doesn't take for any number of reasons, right? So please let us know. We'd love to hear from you on that front. Also, this is an email that we've also received from Walmart internal as a kind of. 
 
Customer service tool, for suppliers about QuickMods generally. So if you have any kind of unresolved issues that melody or I can't answer at the end of this webinar. If you are if you have some kind of questions about the particularities of how QuickMods does or does not apply to your business go ahead and reach out. 
 
I will say we, we don't know very much about how. About this email. We don't know how if it works really efficiently or not. This could be an email that is completely overwhelmed with questions right now and and so yeah, take all that with a grain of salt as well. But that could be helpful. 
 
A helpful little thing to write down QuickMods@email.walmart.com. Okay. And with that we'll get to the more general Q and a and maybe we could look at some of those responses too.  
 
Melodie Hays: Yeah we actually have no one who has asked a question yet we'll give you guys a second to, to pop those questions in the q and a if you have any. 
 
But the first thing that we have is first heard about. QuickMods through SupplyPike. And then Brandy also said item swap was aware of, but only because of SupplyPike QuickMods I was not aware of until today. So Sounds like it's new, it's news to everyone.  
 
Peter Spaulding: Yeah. I guess that's, it warms our heart to know that we're helping. 
 
But maybe that's a skewed sample size too.  
 
Melodie Hays: Awesome. I'm not seeing any questions come through, so I guess, we'll, if this is where you jump off, we're so lucky. Thank you so much for joining us. If you wanna Yep. Perfect. So we have to contact us. Those are our actual emails. People have actually been using them a lot more lately, which. 
 
We always want that engagement, which is great. So please feel free to send us an email and we will, we'll follow up with you and get you all of the information that you need. Or you can find us on SupplyPike dot com. Please feel free to book a demo with us if you're interested in learning more about our products or have any other questions. 
 
You can actually schedule some time on our calendars through there. Excellent. If you wouldn't mind going to the next one. We have some resources. I think, oh no, we're talking about our live in-person event. So on January 31st. Unfortunately, I will not be there because I will be at the HAR National Hardware Show in Las Vegas. 
 
But on the 31st, we are having disputing Walmart AP deductions. This is a live in-person event. It's located in northwest Arkansas. So if you're. Familiar with the Supply chain Hall of Fame. That's the supplier Hall of Fame, but it's actually the supply chain Hall of Fame located in the Kellogg's building in Rogers. 
 
That's actually right across from our office. So you can always stop by, come look at our office, come meet the team. We're gonna have it from seven 30 to 9:30 AM love to see you. And yeah, come learn about AP deductions with us. We also have some links, so that's where we have the growth form notes. 
 
We have the compliance with Walmart course, and then we have some SupplierWiki webinars. So you can go and check all of that out. And here's some other resources. We have some eBooks. So many eBooks, you guys, these are all like a hundred pages long. We have them on SQEP, we have 'em on OTIF. The Walmart deduction codes explained as well as we have target and Amazon if you guys are in those retailers. 
 
So check those out. We'll send those out afterwards. And now we can jump into a quick demo. Thank you everyone again. If this is where you le leave us. I'm so glad that you guys were able to join us, but now we'll take a dive into our otip app.  
 
Peter Spaulding: Sorry, real quick. Melody, we did have one question at the very end here about the difference between reduce and add and reduce and swap. 
 
So real quickly, I'm just gonna go back to that graphic. And we will talk that. Through again. So reduce and add and reduce and swap. I believe were the two. Sorry, lemme double check two. Yes. Reduce and add and reduce and swap. The difference there is that, as far as I understand it and again, feel free to chime in, I believe that with reduce and swap, you see how there's those two items, there's a. 
 
A clear blue outlined bottle and an orange outlined bottle being replaced by three items that are completely different. So I think the difference that they just wanted to emphasize there, Is that with reduce and add, you're switching one, two of one item out for two of a different item. In this one, you're switching a given number of two separate items out for a given number of a completely different item. 
 
And I'm not sure the extent to which these are meant to These are four kind of discreet functions that don't have any overlap. I think what they're just trying to communicate here is the flexibility, right? So that it, as long as we're talking about vertical exchanges there could be a variety of those as well. 
 
Hopefully that answers your question. But we're a little. Crunched for time now and so we'll go over to the OTIF radar demo, if that's okay. But I just wanted to go back to this graphic. Again, I don't think that these are discreet functions. I don't think that these are all super important in and of themselves so much as they're there to communicate the many different varieties of changes and swaps that can be made. 
 
So hopefully that helps, but Alright. I will stop sharing my screen here and let you take over the demo there. Melody.  
 
Melodie Hays: Awesome. Can you guys see my screen?  
 
Peter Spaulding: Yes, I believe we can.  
 
Melodie Hays: Perfect. Okay just a quick review of our OTIF Radar app. So this is an application that will help you prevent and actually recover a lot of the fines that you might be experiencing with tif. 
 
So Walmart's on time in full. Program things that we have in this application that could be really helpful for you, as you can see your fines over time. So this is actually predicting, a month in advance of expected fines. How much do you think you're going to get split between prepaid and in full? 
 
This is a prepaid demo and we have a collect demo as well if you guys are interested in seeing what that looks like. If you're a collect supplier, please feel. Free to schedule some time with us because we'd love to show you not only what this application would look like for a collect supplier, but what it would look like with your data. 
 
So we actually offer a free 14 day trial for anyone. We'll pull your data in and show you, all of the insights that you could be getting from this application before, before you purchase, which is I think, pretty powerful. So over here we have a summary. You can get a little deeper dive into what fines that you might be receiving. 
 
What is your supplier score for versus what is your overall score. You can see how many cases are not in full, and then you can actually click in and see the expected fines. Based off of the purchase orders, so which purchase orders are actually impacting you you can click on that. 
 
What are your early cases, your late cases, all of that fun stuff. One really powerful thing of this tool is that you can actually go and dispute those pos inside of high Radius. So we collect all of the documentation that you need. It's over six different apps that we're actually pulling all of the different the resources that are needed in order to submit this dispute to high Radius. 
 
So what that looks like is you just hit this and then since it's a demo count, we have this button, little grade out here, but in, in your account. You would actually be able to click on this and it would go ahead and submit that dispute for you, which is fantastic. Going back to the dashboard. 
 
You can go and see just this little waterfall with what you're probably familiar with inside of OTIF Walmart's OTIF app where you can go and see which cases are non-compliant or what percentage is non-compliant, making up your overall score. So inside of the app, you can also drill down and get a really great analysis of the different root causes that might be impacting your OTIF score. 
 
So let's drill down on the carriers for this example. So on here, I can go and see all of my carriers that are going in impacting and what their on time percentage is. So before this visibility is not easy to get to inside of Walmart's OIF app, but inside of SupplyPike OIF radar, you can easily see Wow, in this example. 
 
Great planes, transportation, they're only 30% on time. So that is really gonna be impacting my bottom line. And this is how many, this is the actual fine amount that is, is impacting me from their poor performance. And so what we've seen suppliers do with this data is they will actually go and take this to their carriers or to their three pls and say, Hey look this is the financial impact that you are having on the business. 
 
I would like to. Cut some sort of deal where I either get this money back or I actually you pay this fine. That can be a helpful insight that you can see here. It is based in a chart for you to go and look at by percent and by volume. So you can see even though again, great Plains Transport, they're only. 
 
Wow. 30% on time and 69% late. Their volume is actually very low for my overall business, so they're not a carrier that I use very often. You can also see you're in full performance and everything like that. So we have this type of analysis for carriers, origins departments, destinations, items, vendor numbers, everything. 
 
You can even create your own segment, really drill down into the data and decide, okay, what. What actions can I be taking inside of my business in order for it to have a meaningful impact on my bottom line? Again, this is the purchase order screen where you can go and actually dispute, although the charges that you're seeing. 
 
We have a really great webinar on best practices for going and disputing OTIP charges. And this application takes all of that work that usually might take. Hours to compile the analysis, hours to compile the research and makes it as easy as just a couple of clicks. A lot of great insights that are baked into this application so that you don't have to spend time just wondering what fines are actually invalid and going and disputing it, collecting all of that information to go and dispute. 
 
We also have a page where you can view how your disputes are doing inside of high Radius. Has it been accepted? Was it failed? Why did it fail? Did they push it back to you, kick the fine back to you and say that No, we're not gonna accept this. How much was disputed? All of that stuff is right here inside of the app. 
 
What is your win rate? We see a lot of suppliers just before write off o TIF charges and focus mostly on the prevention apps aspect of OTIF, which is a great practice if those fines are truly valid. If you have issues inside of your supply chain, but if you are receiving invalid fines, Something that Walmart is taking an error. 
 
This is money that you can actually go and win back. And we've seen people's dispute rate go from 0% to, upwards of 90%, which is just fantastic. Some suppliers are actually even receiving. More money back than what they disputed. Really interesting phenomenon. But yeah that's the high level of what this application can do. 
 
Really high level. If you want to see more, this is interesting to you, please go to playback.com. Book some time on us. We would love to show you this application with your real data. And it give you a free trial. Let you submit actually a couple of disputes on us. See if you can win some money back before your trial is even done. 
 
That's happened a few times. People have won back even hundreds of thousands of dollars before their trial is actually completed. That's all I got for you guys here today. I hope that answered everyone's questions. Do you have anything else? Is there anything else, Peter? 
 
Peter Spaulding: Nothing else? Nope, that's  
 
Melodie Hays: all for me. Awesome. Cool. Thank you everyone. Have a fantastic rest of your Thursday.