Applying the Six-Step Process to the Food Information Regulation (FIR)
Step one: Materially important issue
Since the consequences of non-compliant products would have been £7.5m per day across Waitrose's local and regional portfolio, supplier adherance to this regulation became a materially important issue. This meant that the first step of the process had already been complete. Around half of our customers begin working with us at step two, having identified the important issues to their business and stakeholders internally.
Step two: Smart Goal
The primary goal of the project was to communicate FIR requirements to all local and regional suppliers and help them to ensure products were compliant before the deadline.
Step three: Benchmark
Waitrose were aware that their local and regional product portfolio was made up of 1500 products which would all need to be compliant to the new food information regulation. Waitrose needed to understand their suppliers' current knowledge of the FIR and how many products were already compliant. This provided a benchmark (or starting point) against their SMART goal.
Supply Pilot's Campaign Team ran a supplier contact accuracy campaign to ensures that, when suppliers were informed about their compliance to the new regulation, it is sent to the right person within the their organisation. As part of this phase of the project, Supply Pilot also made sure that alongside communicating the regulatory requirements to suppliers, the purpose and importance of the project is also made clear. This helped suppliers understand the project’s significance and the steps that needed to be taken.
Typically retailer and brand supplier data is only 18% accurate. This low level of contact accuracy means that supply chain data collection exercises can be delayed by months whilst emails are sent to:
- inactive inboxes
- incorrect contacts
- commercial contacts who don't have the appropriate level of knowledge or the right information to hand
Step four: Activation
Failing to adhere to the new Food Information Regulation would infer incredibily high costs to Waitrose and would affect their ability to sell well over a thousand products. Therefore, all local and regional suppliers had to be effectively engaged and educated around the new regulation in a short space of time to ensure compliance.
To help suppliers understand what was required of them, Waitrose utilised the supplier self-help function on the Supply Pilot Platform. This was supported by the Supply Pilot Campaign Team who also conducted a supporting engagement campaign to help suppliers understand the regulations and which products were affected. Clear guidance was then given on the actions needed to ensure compliance with the FIR regulations.
This included category-specific information which helped suppliers to better understand the regulation without having to ask questions to Waitrose about their products. For example, some local breweries had not realised that FIR also applied to beverages. If it were not for the Waitrose FIR initiative, these suppliers would have been non-compliant and their products at risk from being removed from sale.
Step five: Data-driven KPI
The Supply Pilot Platform provided supplier dashboards that showed which suppliers progress and which of them were using the self-help resources to ensure their products were FIR compliant.
Supply Pilot’s Campaign Team were able to target specific suppliers and tailor the support given based on their progress and use of the platform's resources. The live supplier dashboards on the Supply Pilot Platform also meant that Waitrose had full transparency on FIR compliance progress across their local and regional suppliers throughout the engagement project.
Step six: Commercialisation
The solutions implemented by Supply Pilot enabled suppliers to achieve full compliance to the new Food Information Regulation just 6 months after the start of the project. This spanned across 1500 products and 650 local and regional suppliers. The completion of the project ensured that no costs would ensue due to any non-compliant products.
Instead, the supplier engagement campaign and the self-help function of the Supply Pilot Platform meant that Waitrose actually saved approximately £100k in resource costs and significantly strengthened their local and regional supplier relationships.
