Harmons Grocery keeps the shelves stocked with Domo.

 
Challenge: Faced with panic shopping during the COVID-19 pandemic, Harmons needed to keep its shelves stocked while managing supplier shortages.

Solution: Harmons used Domo to prioritize its orders so customers would be able to buy what they need most.

Impact: Harmons was able to use its data to get orders in with suppliers while national chains still struggled to respond.

Even on the best of days, it’s important that grocery stores stock the right items to help keep their customers happy. But when you’re in the middle of a global pandemic, having the right products – and enough of them – is not only essential for business, but critical to the health and safety of our communities.

Harmons is no different. Starting as a fruit stand in 1932, this family-owned and operated supermarket chain has grown to 19 locations throughout Utah. Harmons has relied on Domo for several years to help make data-driven decisions about which products to stock to ensure each store meets the needs of its specific neighborhood.

“We probably have a couple of thousand tiles that we use for different areas of the business,” said Todd Jensen, Vice President of Sales at Harmons. “We have a tile on Domo that tracks our sales every 15 minutes during the day, which allows us to know what’s going on whether you’re in a store or not.”

Real-time insights for a real-time response.

During the COVID-19 response, data was the key to keeping shelves stocked amid the panic buying and supplier shortages.

The challenge started for Harmons when local celebrity and Utah Jazz star Rudy Gobert tested positive for COVID-19, precipitating the shutdown of the NBA and raising awareness about the seriousness of the virus for many shoppers. “As soon as that started happening, we saw sales immediately shoot through the roof. We had stores calling to ask for extra trucks of product just to keep up for the next day,” said Jensen.

Using Domo, Jensen was able to quickly pull a report showing the top 1,000 items sold within the last 24 hours, helping to sound the alarm for what he needed the stores to start ordering. While obvious items like toilet paper, hand sanitizers, and cleaning products shot to the top of the list, Jensen also discovered a few surprises. For example, the store was selling a week’s worth of root vegetables in a 24 hour period, while everyone’s least-favorite canned meat became a bestseller. “Oddly enough, Spam went from an obscure item for us to becoming one of the top five items in the entire company that people were buying. We went from selling a case or two a week to needing hundreds of cases within a week.”

Creating a data-driven shopping list.

The speed at which Harmons was able to pull its sales data proved to be a decisive advantage when it came time to put in orders. “If I would have asked for that top 1,000 report before we had Domo, I wouldn’t have had it until Christmas. Instead, I was able to call my analyst and get that report in under 30 minutes.” Thanks to that report, Jensen was able to put his orders in with suppliers while slower, national chains were still trying to understand what was going on.

Meanwhile, because panic buying meant that sales multiplied several-fold overnight, suppliers began to experience issues finding enough trucks to deliver products out to stores. This forced grocers to prioritize their most important SKUs, rather than order everything. Harmons was able to use Domo to not only see its top-selling items, but to scan its stocks to see what was missing. This helped the grocer prioritize its top 4,000 SKUs out of its normal 60K+ SKUs without having to worry about lower-priority items.

In the first few weeks of the crisis, online orders increased by approximately 200%. However, since the online store doesn’t have the capability to reflect real-time stock, employees struggled to fill orders that included out-of-stock items. Using Domo, Harmons was able to specifically track its out-of-stock items and increase its orders appropriately, reducing its out-of-stock issues by 60%.

“We’ve been able to react to things faster, quickly jump on ordering products, and adjust margins to a changing landscape,” said Jensen. “Instead of making decisions based on emotions in the moment, our data has helped us make decisions on what was actually happening in our stores. It helps us make things better for our customers and better for our business operations.”