Why is Execution the Achilles Heel of Category Management?

Great strategy often dies on the shelf. It’s a painful truth in the CPG industry. But why, after all these years, is retail execution still the Achilles' heel of category management?

This exact question was the focus of a recent “Conversations on Retail” episode, where host Matt Fifer sat down with two industry titans: Dr. Brian Harris, the renowned "father of category management" and CEO of IntentAI, and Storesight’s own CEO, Ty Kasperbauer. Their discussion offered a sharp diagnosis of the challenges facing the industry and a clear roadmap for a future built on strategy, agility, and a new class of retail intelligence.

Let’s dig into what they said.

Beginning with a frank assessment of modern category management, Dr. Harris argued that the discipline has become disconnected from its original purpose and is now hindered by several critical limitations:

• It’s Too Tactical: Category Management has drifted its focus to the mechanics of planograms, pricing, and promotions. It loses real connection to the actual shelf, where a high-level strategic vision drives true category growth.

• It’s Backward-Looking: Modern Category management relies too much on analyzing past trends, which is no guarantee of success when, as Ty noted, "consumer demands don't care about retail planning cycles." In an increasingly competitive and technology driven marketplace, this is exponentially true. 

• It’s Too Slow: Manual processes and a reliance on siloed data mean a category plan can take four to six months to develop. "The world can change in two weeks," Dr. Harris warned.

Above all, as a seasoned CPG professional, Dr. Harris believes that execution is the “Achilles’ Heel” for Modern Category Managers. Even the best plans fail if they aren't executed properly at the shelf. This being said, professionals have accepted their fate of driving blind because historically, getting fast, accurate, and scalable feedback on in-store execution has been nearly impossible.

This final point resonated deeply for all three speakers. As Ty Kasperbauer bluntly put it, "Category strategy without execution is category fantasy." If brands are flying blind, unable to see if their strategies are actually coming to life in the thousands of stores they serve, then how well is the hard work of Category Managers impacting the retailer, the brands themselves, and most importantly, the average grocery store customer.

The New Framework: Strategy, Planning, and Execution

In continuity with earlier “It’s On” conversations, Dr. Harris introduced a new, forward-thinking three-phase model for category management: Important to note, Dr. Harris isn’t just commenting on Category Management. Heralded as the inventor of Category Management, Dr. Harris’ model of Category management is informed by decades of research, collaborative inspection, and foremost, familiarity and adoption of the precipice of AI intertwining with retail intelligence. 

Let’s take a look at this framework.

• Strategy: As a foundation, the strategy phase identifies simple demographics and metrics to understand the basis of a shopper's intentions. But the next step is key. The deep-seated motivations, attitudes, and "shopper missions" that drive consumer behavior come from through future growth platforms, not just repeating past successes.

• Planning: In planning, this process maps the entire shopper journey, from need to purchase, providing the insights to build effective programs.

• Execution: This is where the strategy becomes reality. It’s the tactical work of the traditional eight-step process, but it is now directly informed and driven by a clear, overarching strategy, and that’s where technology comes into play.

This framework re-establishes strategy as the driving force. But to work effectively, it requires a new kind of fuel: data that is not just accurate, but also fast, relevant, and scalable.

The Enabler: Real-Time Intelligence at Scale

This is where the conversation turned to the anticipation and power of technology.
"The retail space has just been left behind in terms of real-time data," Ty explained. "You can't be agile if you don't have the data."

Storesight was purpose-built to fill this gap. By combining a 3-million-strong network of real shoppers with a powerful AI platform, we deliver an always-on, real-time view of the shelf. We empower category and sales teams to see what's happening in-store and take immediate action.

Dr. Harris emphasized that for a tool to be truly productive in this new era, it must deliver on four key attributes: Speed, Accuracy, Relevance, and Scale. "I think what Storesight has put together, meeting all those criteria." he concluded, 

From Theory to Bottom-Line Impact

This isn't just a theoretical shift; it’s delivering tangible results today. Ty shared a few powerful examples of how Storesight is helping customers solve high-stakes problems:

• A Fortune 500 CPG company launching 1,000 new products is using Storesight to analyze market opportunities before launch and then create executional scorecards to monitor in-store performance in real-time, ensuring they achieve "escape velocity."

• Another Fortune 500 brand saw concerning POS data and used the Storesight platform to identify a systemic "phantom inventory" issue with a key retail partner. Bringing this data to the retailer led to an instantaneous half-million-dollar order and solved a multi-million-dollar problem.

• By providing a single source of truth, Storesight is fostering a new level of data-informed collaboration between suppliers and retailers, helping them jointly solve complex issues like optimizing policies for locked merchandise to balance theft prevention and sales lift.

Echoing the rally of previous conversations with Dr. Harris, “The future of category management is here.” By moving beyond outdated processes, teams can become more strategic, creative, and agile, ensuring execution is no longer built on speculation. And for those of us with a tempestuous relationship with technology, fearing its overreach into retail, Dr. Harris offered a crucial reminder: “AI won’t replace the category manager, but it will free them from manual tasks to focus on what humans do best: thinking strategically.”

By closing the gap between plan and execution, Storesight is providing the intelligence layer for this next generation, empowering our customers to win at the shelf, every single day.

View the full Conversation with Matt Fifer and Dr. Harris