See how Duracell shifted from checkbox OTIF compliance to measurable replenishment and in-store execution outcomes to drive OSA and dominate their category across retailers.
The conversation around on-shelf availability has shifted. For years, the focus was transactional - order placed, order fulfilled, checkbox complete. But leading CPGs have realized something critical: strong order fill rates don't automatically translate to products on shelves. The real challenge lies in that gap.
OSA failures rarely occur in a vacuum. They're symptoms of misalignment starting at the shelf, through the end-to-end supply chain - between what retailers expect to sell, how products move through the distribution network, and how they're executed in stores. Without a shared understanding of these dynamics, retailers and CPGs end up working in silos, solving pieces of a larger puzzle without seeing the whole picture.
This is why the most effective CPG partners start by sitting down with retailers and asking hard questions: Where are out-of-stocks actually happening? Why? What does the data reveal about demand patterns, seasonality, and shopper behavior in your stores? A common language and aligned perspective is where transformation begins.
Solving OSA requires thinking beyond any single function. It's about how commercial strategy, assortment, shelf layouts, promotions, demand forecasting, and replenishment all work together - or fail to work together. Each decision cascades through the system.
Consider the interconnections: When a promotion drives unexpected demand, does your forecasting adjust? When you redesign a planogram, does your customer supply chain respond accordingly? When demand drops seasonally, do you have visibility to prevent overstocks and costly markdowns? These aren't separate problems - they're interconnected pieces of a single system.
Leading CPGs recognize this and bring expertise across all these dimensions to the table - not as vendors pushing product, but as strategic partners invested in the retailer's success. They understand that shared wins require shared accountability.
Duracell has built this model at scale. Their approach isn't complicated, but it is comprehensive - starting with alignment on the problem, moving through strategic collaboration across commercial and customer supply chain functions, and ultimately executing with precision at the shelf.
In an exclusive workshop hosted by ECR Retail Loss, the leading global authority on OSA research, Karey Todd, Head of Retail Operations for Duracell US, and Glenn Morrison, Retail Supply Director for Duracell US, walk through their end-to-end OSA strategy.
While the full recording is only available for ECR members, we're sharing three key insights from their presentation with you today - so you can see how a leading CPG is thinking about this problem through a replenishment and store-execution lens, partnering with retailers across multiple functions, and driving measurable improvements in OSA.
Duracell shifted from simply checking if products matched planograms to actively measuring OSA and using data-driven alerts to guide store-level actions. This pivot transformed retail execution from a checkbox exercise into a strategic tool for driving measurable sales impact.
Rather than sending in-store merchandisers into stores to randomly check shelves, Duracell uses granular data and insights to predict where problems will occur - flagging products that haven't sold in X days and customizing alert thresholds by retailer. This precision targeting means merchandisers know exactly where to go and what to fix before they walk through the door.
Duracell also adapted their success metrics for different retailers (in-stock-to-sales for Home Depot, storm-driven demand for Walmart, high item-store combinations for CVS/Walgreens), enabling them to speak each retailer's language and prove value on the metrics that matter most to them.
And crucially, they close the loop. By requiring in-store merchandisers to document shelf conditions upon entry and exit, Duracell created accountability for every store visit. This transforms vague retail execution ROI (e.g., a monthly PDF report) into consistent, measurable outcomes that help justify continued merchandising investment.
By analyzing shared data - including POS sales, inventory levels, promotional calendars, seasonal trends - Duracell's customer supply chain team can proactively surface issues and opportunities: phantom inventory hotspots, promotion planning gaps, demand spikes. More importantly, they quantify the impact. Rather than asking retailers for incremental inventory investments without data, they present concrete evidence: post-storm lift analysis, promotion ROI calculations, sales velocity comparisons.
This shifts the conversation from "trust us" to "here's the proof," positioning Duracell as data-driven strategic partners in a very competitive category. When retailers see the numbers, they're far more willing to invest in inventory that drives measurable returns!
