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INSIGHT DISCOVERY
Consulting Baseline Aggregation
Through analysis of its customers’ buying behavior Grainger discovered three significant insights related to the nature of MRO material demand:
- 90% of a facility’s MRO items are purchased only once or twice in a given year.
- 75% of a facility’s MRO items will not be repurchased the following year.
- These infrequent “unplanned purchases” typically account for 40% of a facility’s MRO spend.
These findings eventually formed the basis of a GTM messaging campaign entitled “The Power of Planning the Unplanned”. It incorporated these insights into a formal presentation coupled with a customer specific analytic to demonstrate an opportunity to treat unplanned purchases as a category unto itself and consolidate with Grainger.
This insight driven approach to selling was highly effective and resonated with customers, leading to a desire to discover more “MRO insights” via further analysis.
Working at the time as a Consulting Manager within Grainger Consulting Services, I aggregated previously completed MRO supply chain assessments to create a unified database of customer procurement and inventory performance measurements.
Through subsequent analysis and further secondary research I was able to discover a series of MRO-related trends and averages, such as:
- On average, inventory replenishment consumes 90 minutes of employee time.
- Procuring a non-inventoried item typically involves 40 steps, 8 handoffs and 3 approvals.
- 50% of MRO inventory items are inactive, with no usage during prior 12 months.
- On average, MRO inventory turns less than 1x annually.
- 85% of MRO inventory items have an on-hand value of less than $200.
- 25% of storeroom visits end with MRO technicians leaving without proper material or quantity.
In total, more than twenty MRO procurement and inventory related insights were uncovered and validated by my analysis and research.
These insights formed the basis of Grainger’s subsequent narratives for procurement and inventory solutions, and were utilized in Grainger sales and marketing campaigns for more than a decade to promote awareness and adoption of KeepStock, Grainger’s inventory management offering.
A sample of Grainger marketing content utilizing MRO procurement and inventory related insights can be found below.
