MIS has come a long way since its inception 15 years ago. A wholly owned subsidiary of the Processed Vegetable Growers’ Association (PVGA), the service started when an iceberg lettuce grower asked the British Iceberg Growers’ Association (BIGA) to monitor product prices for him. What started as a one-off investigation grew into what is known as MIS, which now collects retail prices from supermarkets to provide an inexpensive service so that growers and suppliers can keep an eye on the market. Initially providing prices of a limited amount of products, MIS now collects a full and varied list of fresh produce, from salads to soft fruit, exotics to prepared products.
A recent IT innovation has allowed MIS to go a step further, to offer a more diverse and full range of reports to its 150 customers. The company embraced a new bespoke collection system from Anglia IT Solutions, which now sees MIS’ retail price collectors input their prices into a personal digital assistant (PDA) that transfers the information straight to MIS’ database. “This company started off using sheets of paper and pens to collect the information from supermarkets, which was then faxed through to the office,” explains David Tebbutt, business development manager at MIS. “And until we got this new system in June last year, that was what we were doing, apart from the fact we exchanged the fax machine for email four years ago. We had to type all of the data from our collectors into Excel spreadsheets manually, and then email the report to our customers, which literally took all day. The new system has revolutionised our business; now the collectors type the prices into the PDA, which then transfers the data to our administration system.”
MIS retrieves price information from all the big four multiples, as well as Somerfield, The Co-op, Aldi, Netto, Lidl, Marks & Spencer, Waitrose and Budgens, and has a network of data collectors across England, from Kent to Darlington. The collectors answer MIS’ questions via the PDA while in supermarkets, concerning the produce type, price, quantity and whether there is a promotion on - for example, if the price includes a 10-per-cent-off offer. Once the collectors have provided all the information needed, the PDA connects to the general packet radio service (GPRS), and the information is sent to MIS’ database. The office then checks the information, before releasing it.
Instead of MIS’ customers receiving the figures by fax or email, they can now access the retail prices on the MIS website, where it is now possible to access previous weeks’ figures and compare. The website also allows MIS’ customers to search the database for prices of, or promotions on, particular fruits or vegetables.
The new system has allowed MIS to become more flexible, and gives the business the opportunity to ask its collectors further and varied questions through the PDA. “You can set the PDA to ask any questions you like, and it is easy to add new categories,” explains Tebbutt. “In the past, the collectors were less inclined to write down new product ranges they had noticed, because it took time. But now they can make notes electronically.”
With this new system in place, MIS is able to develop and move on to further avenues of research, according to Tebbutt. “We are now looking to move on from the standard reports we produce, to collect more and specific information, like prices within a particular county, how much space is allocated to a product in the supermarkets, or how much stock is available, for example,” he says.
“At the moment, we are conducting these specialised reports by individual request. We are trying to move away from just supplying price configuration, and going to our customers and saying that we can do so much more. The beauty of the new system is that we can collect an awful lot more information than before.”
MIS is already in negotiations with certain customers, and hopes to offer them individual bespoke reports. “We have about four to five projects that we are working on,” says Tebbutt. “Now is our time to flourish; the whole system was only really completed by the end of 2007 and, because it took time to get all of our collectors to use the PDA system, it has only been running properly since the start of the year.”
Tebbutt hopes this bespoke service will eventually translate into something that will be available to all customers on the website. “In the future, we should be able to offer the standard price list report, and then the gold report, where two to three bits of information will be added on, to give another level of service,” he says. “But at the moment, we are concentrating on the bespoke route.”
As well as its tailor-made offer, MIS is looking into providing an in-store market service research facility, where its collectors, with permission of the stores, will ask consumers a series of questions while they shop. The company will aim this service at fresh produce suppliers, to enable them to build a bigger picture of what is happening in store. “I think that this would help the customers understand what the end user wants,” says Tebbutt. “When you consider that we could send out collectors to five different stores across the country and achieve 40 responses in each store, that is 200 responses - it is a lot of information. Customers will see what has affected consumers’ purchases in store, and it ties in really well with what the PDA can do. We have decided it is an area we should really go into.”
As well as the system giving the company time to invest in bigger and better things, it has made the MIS office a more efficient and environment-friendly enterprise. “The big advantages that the system has brought have been the reduction of subscription errors, along with the sheer speed we now work at,” says Tebbutt, who has worked for MIS for two years. “We are no longer spending all day every Monday typing up the figures and communicating it to customers. And we are also working towards being a paperless office.”
Tebbutt has noticed that the fresh produce industry is changing and, with it, the company’s customers. MIS’ customer base, which includes importers, suppliers, embassies, NGOs, trade publications and trade associations, is decreasing, due to fresh produce businesses consolidating. But this may not have the negative connotations that some would think.
“The marketplace is decreasing because of rationalisation in the industry,” says Tebbutt. “Customers have either gone out of business or merged, which has brought the number down. And I think we can only assume that there is going to be morer of this in the industry.
“MIS needs to reposition itself to go in the direction the industry is taking. There are not going to be the amount of players there are now in the future, and the supply base will be made up of larger players. That is why we are verging out and offering more services to our customers; there are a whole range of services we can offer, and we are very open to suggestions.”
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