GNC Holdings is increasing inventory turns and sales with a strategic vendor drop ship program.
Leveraging enVista technology, GNC directly uses inventory from vendors to fill orders. This eliminates the step of processing batches of inventory in GNC fulfilment centers and distributing goods to stores, reducing order fulfilment time while making products more accessible to consumers.
GNC deploys enVista technology to ensure drop ship activities are properly monitored and are compliant with all vendor agreements. This includes ensuring GNC’s inventory, order and shipping activities are in sync with vendors. In addition, GNC checks vendor compliance with service level agreements (SLAs) in areas such as timeliness, order accuracy and fill rate. Furthermore, GNC tracks systems issues, as well as that vendors use the proper systems and that any issues are resolved promptly.
To make the monitoring and compliance enforcement of such as a broad set of activities and vendor agreements feasible, GNC employs exception management. This is the practise whereby only information that indicates significant deviation of actual results from budgeted or planned results is brought to the attention of management.
In addition, GNC attempts to maximize manageability of its drop ship strategy by carefully selecting what products it drop ships. When introducing drop ship products to its assortment, GNC ensures the new products target the same market as existing inventory. The retailer will not automatically add all the merchandise a drop ship supplier offers.
