We are delighted to announce that the Drop and Drive Workgroup has been selected as finalists for two prestigious awards – CILT UK for Supply Chain Innovation and Supply Chain Excellence Awards for Food & Drink Category. 
The recognition is for the literally hundreds of people who have contributed to helping the Drop and Drive Claims Workgroup successfully change the way chilled goods are receipted into the major grocery retailers.
Since first raising the contentious subject in 2014, the workgroup has been committed to continuously developing and sharing best practice to reduce the errors that have resulted in delayed payments for suppliers by:
- Addressing the root cause causes of unsubstantiated retailer deductions
- reducing the likelihood of error throughout the retail supply chain and
- gathering the data that maintains the appropriate level of pressure on retail reform.
Ongoing stakeholder engagement, involving careful diplomacy, has enabled both large and small chilled grocery suppliers to be heard ─ and retailers have had their say too. Today the workgroup is delivering fantastic results:
- total claims reduced by 85% (2019 vs 2014) – for the members
- Seven major supermarket chains adopting Good Faith Receipting
- Significant improvement on visibility with job satisfaction and team morale at an all-time high
One founding member reports a reduction of as much as 70%, commenting “structured approach to problem solving and we now have a very clear transparent way of auditing the lines. There’s less errors with invoicing now than there ever used to be.”
Nick Allen, Distribution Director, Tesco was happy to confirm “Tesco are proud and delighted to have worked with Simply Supply Chain and the Drop and Drive Claims Workgroup to build relationships with Suppliers, which has driven collaboration across Retailers and our supply base to support improvements in our receipting processes and availability to our customers. Working together has enabled a new and fresh approach to fixing long term challenges for the sector and driven substantial change for all parties involved.”
And finally, a big thank you to Christine Tacon, outgoing Groceries Code Adjudicator who has supported and worked with the supplier group since its inception. Christine recently commented; “I appreciate all the work that the members of the SSC working group put into addressing an issue which I had raised as a serious concern. They got under the skin of the issue to work on practical solutions with retailers. In so doing, many other suppliers have benefited from their work and the GCA survey has shown a continued improvement in performance in what has been a long-standing problem.”
We are proud of the results we have achieved as a group; the Drop and Drive Claims Workgroup has taken on this seemingly unsolvable problem and driven a win-win solution through collaboration and a willingness, by suppliers and retailers alike, to innovate. It is testament to the commitment of the wider group that we have now been shortlisted for awards. Championing an industry-wide collaboration is no quick fix, so here's to the judges for sharing their appreciation for what can be achieved when suppliers, retailers, service providers and regulators join forces to work together to tackle a common goal.
If you are interested in finding out more about the Drop and Drive Workgroup please visit our Events & Memberships page or get in touch with Jonathan Kittow, Chairman of the Drop and Drive Workgroup on hello@simply-sc.com
