How to simplify the complex logistics of your POS campaign

POS marketing is such an important channel for retail. Even in an increasingly digital age, printed POS materials are still the most effective ways of reaching customers.

The logistics surrounding it, as you’re probably aware, are complicated and require diligent management. There are always multiple partners involved, which presents a high level of risk. There are ways you can streamline your POS marketing to reduce this risk – and, at the same time, find savings and efficiencies without cutting corners.

The two routes to POS

In the first, you work closely with a field agency partner, who will manage the media plan and all supply partners (of which Granby might be one), and make sure everything gets done.

The second way is by combining your print management requirements with your logistics, through a print and 3PL partner like Granby. This frees up some of the restrictions that cause the complexity – and frees up the field agency to focus on their area of expertise.

1. The role of a field agency partner

A field agency partner will devise and facilitate the delivery of your POS media plan week after week. Their expertise lies in their ability to schedule effectively and efficiently. They make sure that:

The artwork (sometimes involving several brands) goes to print on time
The printer (or printers) delivers the assets to the third party fulfilment (3PL) partner on time
The 3PL partner picks, packs and despatches the assets correctly and on time
The field agency team arrives on schedule in-store to implement the POS media.

One of the strengths of an experienced field agency is that they are hyper-focused on the media plan: whatever else happens, they have to be in-store on a scheduled day and time to implement the POS marketing campaigns.

However, the complexity of POS print management means there’s often a squeeze at the end of the production chain that threatens to throw schedules into chaos. This squeeze often lands upon the fulfilment company – like Granby.

We pull out all the stops to make sure a POS job is delivered but there are many benefits to making sure the squeeze doesn’t happen in the first place.

2. Combining print management and logistics

A 3PL partner like Granby is fairly unique in being able to combine POS print management with logistics. As a POS partner, we work with the field agency to deliver on the same objectives and drive consistently positive outcomes.

So, we are still deadline-driven and pay very close attention to budget control, but we can take a holistic approach that has several benefits.

We keep control of the whole process, end to end. POS is heavily dependent on logistics, which have complexities and are not always best dealt with as items on a schedule.
We manage one print supplier – on a practical level, this fact cuts the risk and improves efficiency. Across multiple print and logistics partners, the management can get crazy – both risky and time-consuming.
As an end-to-end partner, we can be more agile. In a scenario with multiple partners and brands, lead times are always at risk of sliding so, when being managed by a field agency, we’re forced to have rigid SLAs in place. When we are handling the end-to-end process, SLAs can become more fluid because we have full control.
If we are handling an end-to-end POS, we can take charge of the administration – like entering the SKUs – and out and end to this work being repeated by you, the client, and other partners. Thanks to SCOPe, our fulfilment management system, and our API, clients have full access to the data and won’t need to do it all again.
By handling the end-to-end process, we can also cut reporting time – who doesn’t like time freed up to get more done? SCOPe allows our clients realtime data on the progress of their campaigns.
We are realistic with the budget from the outset – costs are often underestimated and a cost saving in one part of the process will show up further down the line. Our experience leads us to strategise solutions from the outset for the best possible outcomes, finding savings and efficiencies without cutting corners.
We analyse our performance for improvements we can make. If something is off in week one, unless it can be tackled head on and fixed, it will still be niggling weeks down the line and will have undoubtedly created various knock-on effects.