Reducing voids

Voids are situations where a retailer has agreed to sell your product, but the product isn't actually on the shelf at the store. Addressing voids is important to keeping your sales steady and maintaining your distribution gains.

Hint: You can set up an alert to help you stay informed of voids, so you can check and address them regularly. For more: Void Alerts & Harmonized Voids Dashboards.

The following sections provide information on reducing voids: 

• Identifying and addressing voids
• Performing a physical void check
• Evaluating the success of your void reduction efforts 
  
  

Identifying and addressing voids

Addressing voids often involves physically visiting stores to resolve issues, so geography is particularly important as store visits can be costly. You can use the following instructions to help you pinpoint where your void efforts will be most impactful and take steps to remedy the voids. 

Steps:

1. For this example, let's say we want to tackle retailer voids. From the dashboard menu, select Retailer Voids.
   
   The dashboard appears with overview of your voids at the top.
   
   
2. In the Voids by State table, identify which states have the most voids. In this case, we can see Texas is the biggest void contributor. Select the row for Texas to filter the dashboard by this state.
   
   
   
3. You can also review the Voids by City table and further filter the dashboard to specific cities. In this case, we can see that Houston and San Antonio are driving most of our voids in Texas, so we will select these cities to narrow our focus.
   
   Hint: You can select Ctrl+Shift (or Cmd+Shift on a Mac) to select more than one row in a table.
   
   
   The Details table now displays a list of stores that you can focus on for your void reduction efforts.
   Note: Since physical store checks can be costly, so you may want to target states or cities that are big drivers of voids and are close to each other geographically, so you can get the most out of your void resolution efforts.
   
   
4. To address the voids you identified:
   • If you don't have a budget for addressing voids or you want to save on costs, you can try sending your buyers an email notifying them of the increase in voids in the regions you identified and see if there is anything they can do to help. They may be able to reach out to store managers in those regions to see if they can resolve physical issues on the shelf or restock problems. 
     
     
   • If you have the budget, you can use a third-party merchandiser to perform a physical check of the stores you identified and address any issues.
     
     
5. In either case, if you want to share the store list you identified with your buyer or a third-party merchandiser, in the Details table, from the Tile actions menu at the top-right corner of the table, select Download data.
   
   
   A window appears where you can select your file format and complete the report download. 

Performing a physical void check

You can use the following method to perform a void check at a store or share these instructions with third-party merchandisers or other employees performing void checks. 

Steps:

1. Locate the product shelf space and make sure the UPC is correct on the shelf tag (the same as on your product).

2. If you do not see the product on the shelf, look for physical reasons that might be contributing to the void, such as a missing shelf tag, other products crowding out or being placed in front of your product, a display blocking your product, etc.

3. Address any obvious issues that you can resolve yourself, such as reorganizing products to reclaim the shelf space or adjusting displays that block the product.

3. If necessary, find an employee to help you address the void, such as for printing a new shelf tag, checking the back room to replenish stock of the product, or getting an order placed if the product is out of stock.  

4. If the product is out of stock, you can ask an employee to make sure there are no issues in an automatic replenishment system, such as the system having an order threshold that is too low (preventing adequate reordering), or having incorrect inventory levels (indicating you have plenty of weeks of supply on hand when the stock is actually low).

Evaluating the success of your void reduction efforts 

Once your void reduction efforts are complete, you can evaluate their success. For retailer voids, we recommend waiting 1-2 weeks to check your progress. For distributor voids we recommend waiting 2-3 weeks. 

Steps:

1. From the dashboard menu, select the Retailer or Distributor Voids dashboard (depending on which one you focused your void reduction efforts on).

2. Apply the same retailer and geography filters you used to identify your original store list. In this case, we focused on Target stores in San Antonio and Houston, TX.


2. Review the line chart to see if your voids are trending down since you began your reduction efforts and check the overview tile at right to see if the Change from the Last Four Week Average value is trending down. In this case, we can see our void reduction efforts had a big impact.