Page 8 - Newsbites March 2019

Commercial Ops Update Looking back and reflecting on 2018 and planning for the rest of 2019 : Brexit: At the time of writing, we are less than one month from the planned exit date from the EU. As you will have seen on the news, the picture is very unclear, with additional updates breaking every day. Movement in recent weeks seems to have narrowed the possibility of a “no deal hard Brexit” on 29th March, but this may be just pushing this out by a couple of months. News also breaking that potential tariffs in the event of a no deal Brexit, may also be reduced by up to 90%. That said, SHS has had to prepare for the worst and has been building stocks on product that is supplied from the EU and on other key lines. Preparations are also being finalised with various haulage companies / customs agents to meet new requirements for the importation of goods, should this apply. In this period of uncertainty, there is the potential for consumers and customers to complete their own stock-piling - therefore we would ask that sales, commercial, demand planning and customer service are very vigilant of abnormally high customer orders of stock and flag immediately. Medicines is our highest risk category, but we should be vigi- lant across all brands. Stock: Collectively everyone delivered a fantastic result for 2018 - stock reduced from £21m in November 2017 to £11.8m at year end, 90+days from £3.5m to £600k and SKU count through range reviews from 1,528 to 1,011 (34%). This has resulted in a reduction in storage space and costs, fewer transactions for everyone to process, a significant drop in bank interest and increase in profit, more focused brand ranging etc. Thank you to everyone across the business for making this happen. The plan for 2019 is to, first and foremost, keep these results in check and to make further marginal gains in each area - 10%. 8