Targeted Product Compliance Feature

General Purpose and Concepts

The purpose of this feature is to produce a recurring report (typically weekly) showing compliance on a selected set of products purchased from a given supplier (typically the master food supplier). To do this a list of products for each property will be maintained in a special Order Guidewhich we will call the “Target Product List” order guide. Each product on the list (in this Order Guide) will contain the supplier SKU (it will also be linked to the supplier which offers the product). This information (the SKU and the supplier) will be used to generate the report that compares actual purchases with the Target Product List (TPL).

To facilitate the report, the products in the TPL Order Guide will be separated into ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ products. A ‘Good’ product is one that is designated as ‘in compliance’. For example, if the property is supposed to buy “ABC Bacon” from Happy Foodsthen this product will be considered “Good’ (a compliant product) and it will be marked as such in the TPL Order Guide (more on the mechanics of how tomark products and setupthe TPL Order Guide below under ”Implementation Details”). ‘Bad’ productsare those that compete with ‘Good’ productsand are considered ‘non-compliant’. This could be the same product from a different supplier(“ABC Bacon ’ from BadBoyFoods), or a different product from the same supplier(“XYZ Bacon ” from Happy Foods), or a different products from a different supplier (“XYZ Bacon from BadBoy), etc. The system will support multiple ‘Good’ and multiple ‘Bad’ products.

In addition to the ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ designation the products will be assigned a TPL Grouping Category (such as ‘Bacon ’) so we know which products are competing against each other allowing us to compute a product compliance rate (e.g. compliance on Bacon ) and keep it separated from the compliance rate for other types of products: Bottle Water, Cooking Oil, etc.. All the Bacon products (‘Good’ and ‘Bad’) will be under the ‘Bacon ’ category. The above TPL Categories are just examples; the user will be able to setup any TPLCategories they need – these are not tied to catalog categories.

Summary of Functional Concepts

  1. Products will be listed in a special Order Guide called “Target Product List”.
  2. There will be one (and only one) of these special Order Guides per property.
  3. Each product in the TPL Order Guide will contain a SKU and it will be linked to its supplier.
  4. The TPL report will use the supplier and SKU to link actual purchases (spend data) to the TPL list.
  5. The TPL Order Guide will include categories to keep competing like-kind products together and to compute meaningful product/category level compliance rates (e.g. a compliance rate for Bacon).
  6. The TPL will designate ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ products.
  7. The TPL report will allow the operator to select a date range of purchasing activity to compare against the TPL list.
  8. The TPL report will allow the operator to select one or multiple properties.
  9. The TPL report can be schedule to run on a periodic basis (weekly, monthly, etc.)

Functional Limitations

  1. If users buy non-compliant product outside of the system the TPL report will not reflect these non-compliant purchases and the related reduction in compliance percentage.
  2. If users buy competing non-compliant products (through the system) that are not reflected in the TPL Order Guide the TPL report will not reflect these purchases as non-compliant spend and will not reflect the related reduction in compliance percentage.
  3. The TPL report will always compare the spend in the selected date range against the products currently listed (at the time the report is run) in the TPL Order Guide. If a historical date range is selected the spend from this period will be compared to the current TPL list– the system will not store historical versions of the TPL Order Guide. (On the other hand, if you discover a new non-compliant product you can add it to the TPL and recomputed compliance rates for past periods.)
  4. If a given TPL list of products is applicable to a number of properties a separate TPL Order Guide must be setup for each property. However, the Order Guide can be setup in one property and then copied to other properties. If a change applicable to multiple properties is made to one property’s TPL order guide the order guide must be copied again (the order guides in each property are not linked).
  5. The report will show one date range of spend at a time. The operator will need to run the report multiple times to see multiple data ranges.
  6. The TPL Report will be based on Purchase Order data, therefore if a substitute product is shipped the substitute product will not be reflected on the TPL Report-- the originally ordered product will. Only TPL productsordered will bereflected on the report.
  7. The TPL Order Guide should never be shared or exposed to a regular user. See “Implementation Details” below- The TPL feature and report will repurpose some of the regular order guide fields. If a regular property user were to inadvertently change these fields the TPL report will produce incorrect and misleading results. Additionally, the products in the TPL report may be from a punchout supplier allowing a regular user to see these in an order guide could create confusion and/or orders that will not be fulfilled by the supplier.

Implementation Details

Setting Up the TPL Order Guide

To expedite the development of this feature and reduce the resource impact on BirchStreet’s development team two existing fields in the order guide will be repurposed. This will have no impact on property operations as no regular users will have access to the TPL Order Guide. The two repurposed fields are “Pack” and “Size”. “Pack” is a numeric field and will be used to designate if a product is “Good” or “Bad” (1=”Good”, 0=”Bad”). The “Size” field is alphanumeric and will be used to designate the TPL Category Name (such as “Bacon ”, “Bottled Water”, Etc.).

Repurposed Fields in the TPL Order Guide

Pack (Good/Bad): 1=”Good”, 0=”Bad”

Size: TPL Category Name

These repurposed fields will not be re-captioned. The operator setting up the TPL Order Guide will have to know the repurposed fields and how to use them.

All other fields in the order guide will carry the same meaning. However, only the following fields need be populated in the TPL Order Guide as these are the only fields used by the TPL Report:

Fields to Populate in the TPL Order Guide

  1. Supplier *
  2. Product SKU (Item Number) *
  3. Product Name
  4. Pack: repurposed to Good/Bad ( 1=”Good”, 0=”Bad”) *
  5. Size: repurposed to TPL Category Name *

* Required

Note: The standard order guide data entry logic will not be modified for this feature and therefore the system will not enforce the special TPL Order Guide data rules, such asthe above required fields for TPL use. If a product in the TPL Order Guide is missing a required field or has incorrect data (for example, a ‘3’ for Pack) it may not be reflected in the TPL report correctly. Additionally, the Size column (repurposed for TPL Category) is a free-form text field so the operator setting up the TPL Order Guide must take care to spell the TPL Category name consistently (e.g. “Bacon ” vs. “Beacon”) across all the associated products. The system will represent an inconsistency in spelling as a separate TPL Category. If this feature is used more widely in the future Birch Street may consider developing more robust data entry capabilities to enforce the above rule.

The TPL Report

The TPL report will list, for a selected date range and property list, the purchased TPL items that are either in compliance,not in compliance, or both, along with quantity and spend in dollars based on the report’s parameter screen. The data will be summarized by product (if there are three purchases from on property for a given TPL product this will show up as one line on the report with the total quantity and $ spend of all three transactions). Only items purchased that are in the TPL Order Guide for a given property will be included on the TPL report for that property. The report will be based on Purchase Orders in the “Accepted by Supplier” or “Fax/Email Accepted” status. Purchase Orders in process (New, Awaiting Approval, Awaiting Supplier Acceptance, etc.) will not be used for the TPL report.

The TPL report will include the following columns:

  1. Property ID (Inn Code)
  2. Property Name
  3. Product SKU
  4. Product Name
  5. TPL Category (Size)
  6. Qty Purchased
  7. Total Spend
  8. Compliance (Pack)

Using the report’s parameter screen the operator will be able to sort, filter, group and subtotal on any of the above columns in the report.