GNC - Taking a More Customer-Focused Approach to Analysis with T4G

General Nutrition Companies, Inc. (GNC), based in Pittsburgh, PA, is the largest nationwide specialty retailer of vitamin, mineral and herbal supplements, sports nutrition as well as personal care and related products. GNC operates more than 5,000 retail outlets through various distribution channels in the United States and in international markets.

Business Need

T4G was asked to assist GNC with several key business initiatives. A primary goal was to be able to analyze performance data in a more flexible manner with more emphasis on branding, and the impact of product ingredients and 'customer delivery method' (capsules, tablets, count, dosage, etc.). A second key business driver was the need to determine the impact of promotional activity; GNC has a loyal base of 'Gold Card' customers who receive discounts on merchandise on a regular basis, and various multi-purchase promotions are offered throughout the year.

Solution

T4G worked with GNC to review its business priorities and establish a plan to improve information delivery to the category management teams. A project team comprising representatives from different areas of the supply chain and IT organizations was tasked with defining a range of proposed systems improvements. T4G assisted the team in summarizing and prioritizing the requirements so that GNC could use them to evaluate a number of technology options, including 'build versus buy' scenarios.

Based on this activity, it was agreed that the best return on investment for GNC would be to leverage its legacy systems by providing additional product hierarchy tables to manage a number of key product attributes and improving the management of transactional data to support promotional analysis.

T4G worked with the GNC project team to define these attributes for the core items in its product offer so that GNC could review the business from a more customer-focused perspective. As a result GNC is now better positioned to make effective business decisions on the product delivery method and other factors impacting consumer demand. An additional benefit is that at a higher level this information can be utilized in the merchandise planning process to determine category mix and trends for upcoming periods.

"T4G helped us identify a strategy for moving forward with a number of key business initiatives and has played a significant role in helping IT deliver better information to our category managers," says Tom Smith, CIO.

Back to Case Studies