Core-Mark Upgrades Category Management Strategy
WESTLAKE, Texas — Core-Mark International integrated Blue Yonder Category Management solutions entirely into Blue Yonder's SaaS, completing the digital transformation of its space and floor offerings. The project will be implemented by Blue Yonder Global Professional Services.
Core-Mark had already utilized Blue Yonder's SaaS solutions in its operations in the West, Southwest and Eastern regions and was looking to upgrade its category management capabilities in the Midwest. The integration into the cloud will fully digitalize its offerings, consolidate its toolset for planning staff and standardize the services offered to its customer base.
[Read more: Meet the 2024 Category Captain for Prepared Food: Core-Mark International]
"Our goal is to offer intelligent assortment and space planning insights to our small to medium-sized c-store customers to help them succeed," said Jim Hachtel, director, category management, Core-Mark. "To achieve this, we need to offer solutions that automate cumbersome tasks and provide robust recommendations to optimize their sales. … As a result of this initiative, we expect to extend the benefits we have been experiencing for the last five years with Blue Yonder's cloud tools to our entire U.S. customer base."
The utilization of Blue Yonder's SaaS-based Category Management solutions will unlock several new capabilities, according to Core-Mark, such as enhanced automation through Blue Yonder Planogram Generator and the ability to target strategies based on optimized store groupings through channel clustering.
"By standardizing and enhancing their merchandising offerings, Core-Mark will improve the speed and intelligence of their services, driving greater sales performance for their customers from coast-to-coast. This will strengthen their market position and enable further business scaling," said Vince Beacom, president, global retail, Blue Yonder. "We are excited to have been chosen to help them on this transformation and look forward to further engagements together."
Core-Mark offers a full range of products, marketing programs, and technology solutions to approximately 50,000 customer locations in the United States and Canada through 37 distribution centers. It services traditional convenience retailers, drug stores, box or supercenter stores, grocery stores, liquor stores, and other specialty and small format stores that carry convenience products.