Oliver Wyman Joins ECR Europe Shrinkage & On-Shelf Availability Expert Group to Tackle Billion Dollar Challenge

MUNICH and BRUSSELS, May 21, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --

Sell More, Lose Less

Oliver Wyman and the ECR Europe Shrinkage and On-Shelf Availability Group today announced a sponsorship by Oliver Wyman of the Group's research projects aimed at delivering new insights, tools and techniques to help retailers and manufacturers shift the stubborn problem of shrink and poor on-shelf availability.

Shrink, defined as inventory loss due to a variety of possible causes (e.g., theft, process failures, or food waste), is an evergreen challenge costing the retail industry billions in lost profits each year. Balancing the economic impact of on-shelf availability against the desire to have a product on the shelf when customers want to buy it is a significant challenge.

For over 15 years, the ECR (Efficient Consumer Response) Europe Shrinkage and On-Shelf Availability Group has provided expert, new research and cross-industry best practice to help retailers improve sales and availability while managing shrinkage and waste effectively.  

Members of the Group come from leading European retailers, including Ahold, AS Watson, Asda, Carrefour, Marks & Spencer, Tesco, Sainsbury's, ICA, SOK, Metro, and Lidl, as well as leading manufacturers like P&G, L'Oréal, Mondelez, Diageo, Beiersdorf, and Bacardi. The Group is supported by Professor Adrian Beck from the University of Leicester.

Key deliverables from the Group include pathbreaking reports on collaboration, insights on staff dishonesty, updates on RFID and measuring the ROI on a range of loss prevention technologies, research on the role of packaging in shrink management, a new definition of and explanatory typology for shrinkage, and the highly successful ECR Road Map. Most recently the Group published its loss prevention benchmarking tool - a unique interactive online way for a business to compare its approach with the rest of the industry. All these publications and tools can be found on the ECR shrink team website: http://www.ecr-shrink-group.com.

Oliver Wyman is joining Checkpoint Systems as a sponsor of the ECR Europe Shrinkage and On-Shelf Availability Group. "Oliver Wyman will be a very active sponsor," says Stefan Winter, Partner and retail expert at Oliver Wyman. "We believe in the great value this group is adding to the industry by bringing retailers and manufacturers together to jointly address the challenges of modern retail, and we are proud to become part of it."

Commenting on the sponsorship, John Fonteijn, Retailer Co-Chair and Director of Group Asset Protection at Ahold Netherlands said, "Oliver Wyman will be an excellent new sponsor and our members are very excited about their participation."

Broader focus of the group 

"Our vision is to continue to be thought leaders on both managing shrinkage and improving on-shelf availability, and the collaboration with Oliver Wyman will be of enormous value as we move in this direction," added Colin Peacock, Co-Chair of the ECR Europe Shrinkage and On-Shelf Availability Group and Director of Shrink & Store Operations Improvement at Procter & Gamble, UK. He commented further that  "while historically the group has focused on the topic of shrinkage, we are increasingly aware that shrinkage and on-shelf availability are very closely linked and that both need to be tackled in combination."

To this end, the Group will be investing in cutting-edge research together with a European academic institution and a consortium of leading European retailers. The aim of this research is to investigate the link between shrinkage and on-shelf availability and deliver groundbreaking insights to help retailers to sell more and lose less.

About ECR 

ECR Europe (Efficient Consumer Response Europe) is a joint organisation of National ECR Initiatives and companies from trade and manufacturing in Europe. Its purpose is to promote collaborative processes as fundamental business principle in the consumer goods value chain in Europe to fulfill consumer wishes better, faster and at less cost in a more sustainable way. ECR Europe builds on more than 20 National ECR Initiatives that gather over 1800 leading companies and have issued more than 250 Best Practices Blue Books covering the different areas of ECR strategy (in particular supply chain and demand management) and optimizing other interface topics between manufacturers and retailers.

About Oliver Wyman  

Oliver Wyman is a global leader in management consulting. With offices in 50+ cities across 25 countries, Oliver Wyman combines deep industry knowledge with specialized expertise in strategy, operations, risk management, and organization transformation. The firm's 3,000 professionals help clients optimize their business, improve their operations and risk profile, and accelerate their organizational performance to seize the most attractive opportunities. Oliver Wyman is a wholly owned subsidiary of Marsh & McLennan Companies [NYSE: MMC]. For more information, visit http://www.oliverwyman.com. Follow Oliver Wyman on Twitter @OliverWyman.

About Oliver Wyman's Retail practice 

Oliver Wyman's retail practice draws on unrivalled customer and strategic insight and state-of-the-art analytical techniques to deliver better results for our clients. We understand what it takes to win in retail: an obsession with serving the customer, constant dedication to better execution, and a relentless drive to improve capabilities. We believe our hands-on approach to making change happen is truly unique - and over the last 20 years, we've built our business by helping retailers and consumer goods manufacturers build theirs.

Media contacts 

Oliver Wyman
Corporate Communications
Muellerstrasse 3
80469 Munich
Germany
Andrea Steverding
phone +49-89-939-49-763
email Andrea.Steverding@oliverwyman.com

Stefanie Hauck
phone +49-89-939-49-560
email stefanie.hauck@oliverwyman.com

ECR Europe
University of Leicester
Research Assistant: ECR Europe Shrinkage Group
Megan Bornman
The Friars
154 Upper New Walk
Leicester, LE1 7QA
United Kingdom 
phone +44(0)116-252-5897
email mb562@le.ac.uk