Drop & Drive Supply Group

An award winning supplier-led action group supporting the GCA's drive to eliminate unsubstantiated payment deductions and reduce delays in payments, by the implementation of Good Faith Receiving (GFR).

Before the creation of the Drop & Drive Claims Workgroup, drop and drive unsubstantiated claims were costing
UK chilled suppliers millions (for the 20 original group members, c£15M p/a).

The initiative has delivered a 95% reduction in unsubstantiated claims by delivering innovative win-win solutions, for both suppliers and retailers, from simple and effective labelling, GFR (Good Faith Receiving) and independent auditing.

This group shares best practice on:

• Reducing unsubstantiated claims deducted
• Reducing delays in payments
• Recovering monies owed to suppliers for non-payment of goods delivered
• Reducing errors upon receipt
• Improving service
• Reducing waste

For more information please see our Good Faith Receiving page

Objective

Reducing E2E network cost to serve

The collaboration initiative works with suppliers and retailers to move from frequent deliveries of small quantities (a system that the driver crisis has exposed as driving cost into the network unnecessarily) to a system of ordering larger minimum order quantities at lower frequency and cost. Therefore, reducing the case-pick burden in the warehouse (and put-away cost for smaller customers).

In light of the driver crisis, this has the added advantage of potentially creating full(er) loads, a more reliable service and mitigating some cost-to serve on-costs, for smaller customers.

Reducing End-to-End Costs - Methodology

The initiative will reduce E2E costs and waste through optimising orders using project processes, E2E costing and Ai tools that are proven to reduce E2E costs by >= 10%.

Building Trust

Our collaborative approach will build trust by:

• Using real data
• Using generic costs to calculate the data vs current operating cost
• Developing a common understanding of the cost to serve of each end-to-end supplier/customer relationship
• Developing a common, fact-based supplier approach and language that increases trust and engagement
• Educating retailers on opportunities to reduce waste and cost in their own networks, as well as the suppliers

• Our Ai tools can measure the environmental sustainability of changes, calculating CO2 emissions, packaging waste mass and EPR taxes from item level.
  
  

GET IN TOUCH for more information

Gathering evidence of supplier losses and waste as a result of ineffective sales and forecasting processes and determining best practice to work with retailers.

Objectives

• Developing an end-to-end best practice forecasting & promotional management process for suppliers and retailers
• Assessing the cost and waste of poor retailer processes
• Targeting specific retailer process weaknesses to ‘raise the bar’
• Developing a best practice framework with the GCA in line with the Forensic Auditing guidance

Enabling suppliers to recover monies owed for non-payment of goods delivered (delayed payments). A sum greater than £1.7m has been recovered from multiple retailers by 7 suppliers to date, with 3 further supplier requests in progress.  

The group has won the backing of the Groceries Code Adjudicator (GCA), and we continue to gather evidence and work with the GCA to gain further traction with retailers.

Sharing best practice and advice on:

• How to determine where there are issues
• Which evidence is proven to be the most effective
• Who to approach and how (by retailer)​

The group is also tackling:

• Rolling out an effective Dispute Claims Process across the major retailers
• Developing an effective Returns process for those retailers with manual processes

This best practice group works to increase product differentiation to reduce the likelihood of incorrect identification in retailer RDCs.

• Working to agree a common set of supplier standards for product labelling, applicable to all retailers, to reduce the likelihood of errors upon receipt at the retailer DCs.

• Encouraging the major retailers to incorporate these standards for ALL of their chilled suppliers, therefore reducing the cost of applying them

We offer a space where suppliers can come together to share experiences, recommend approaches and create best practice. Our expert facilitators share their unique insight and support suppliers to work through their operational challenges.

Key industry issues

• Responding to the challenges of the driver crisis and warehouse labour shortages
• Post Brexit issue resolution