8th & Walton provides essential third party services for suppliers, so we were naturally interested to see what suppliers had to say on the subject in the 2014 Supplier Survey.
Nearly half of the suppliers surveyed use at least one third-party service designed for Walmart suppliers.
The complete list of third-party services used by suppliers is extensive, and a fairly large range of services showed up many times:
- Retail coverage
- In-store execution
- Retail Link software
- Broker/local rep to manage the relationship
- Training and development
- Shopper insights (focus groups, surveys, etc.)
- POS analytics
- POP design
- Third party logistics
- Special projects
- Walmart-focused advertising agency
- Prototyping
- Recruitment
Of these, five received votes of 50% or greater for “a great tool that has produced great ROI”:
- Training and development
- POS analytics
- Recruitment
- POP design
- Prototyping
None of these high-value items was in the top three in terms of frequency of use. Training and Development was the fourth most commonly used service, followed by Shopper Insights and POS Analytics.
Why would two of the great tools that produced great ROI be #4 and #6 on the list of third party services used by Walmart suppliers? We don’t know; all we can say is that the other items on the list were even lower. Recruitment was one of the least frequently used services.
Are you using third party services? Are you satisfied with the ROI for those services you’re using? Are you missing out on the services that provide the greatest ROI? Check out 8th & Walton’s classes today to see how training and development can deliver for your company.
