1. 9 Key Reasons to Consider Unlocking
Catman Support
1. Reduce Your Costs»
2. Lack of In-House Expertise »
3. ComplementYourIn-House Expertise»
4. RecruitingYourOwn Catman Staff »
5. Focus on RunningYourBusiness»
6. Increase Staff Productivity»
7. Utilisingthe LatestMethodology»
8. Accessto Additional ServicesandSolutions»
9. Issue Avoidance »
1. Reduce Your Costs
Using and unlocking external catman support, your costs are reduced and consolidated
into a fixed monthly payment allowing you to easily budget.
The average annual salary of an in-house Category Manager is approximately £40 to £55K
per annum. Added to this are costs for recruitment, additional company benefits and on-going
training to keep their skills up to date.
For most businesses, an in-house Catman specialist is a luxury that they simply cannot afford.
However, they are still left with a large potential cost to their business in periods of retailer
fall-out resulting in loss of sales and commercial staff spending their valuable time trying to
solve problems they do not completely understand.
2. Lack of In-House Expertise
Using and unlocking external catman support, you can call a dedicated consultant and
speak to a specialist as often as you like. Your consultant is always on hand to help you
on any category brief or challenging question.
Your businesses Catman needs may peak and trough or be overbearing, so there isn’t enough
resource for a dedicated person. You may be a small, medium or large company and simply
don’t have enough space for another staff member.
Although you are heavily dependent on your commercial team to drive sales, you can’t
justify a full-time, in-house employee. Therefore, there are no available experts on hand if
you have a critical range review coming up and you will need to resort to costly emergency
support should this occur.

2. 3. Complement Your In-House Expertise
Using and unlocking external catman support, you always have a consultant on
call. They can come up with solutions to complement and support your own internal
Catman and Insights team.
You may have a dedicated Catman person/team in-house or a designated employee fulfilling
catman functions in addition to their normal job.
You rely heavily on them for the continuity of your Catman systems and relationships with
your retailers. What happens if there is critical delisting and they are on holiday, off sick or at
an external event or meeting?
What if they are already dealing with a crisis and another one arises at the same time? Or if
there is a serious issue and they try everything they can think of, but it is beyond their
capabilities?
4. Recruiting Your Own Catman Staff
Using and unlocking external catman support, you don’t have to worry. You will always
have on call a highly trained Catman specialist equipped with up-to-date technical
knowledge and experienced skill set.
Perhaps you’re thinking about employing your own internal catman person. If you are not
from a technical background how do you ensure that you recruit people with the right skill set
for your business.
Recruitment is a tough, time-consuming and expensive process at the best of times. It is easy
to be confused and bamboozled with technical jargon if you are not Catman savvy which
could turn out to be a costly mistake for your business if you employ the wrong person.
5. Focus on Running Your Business
Using and unlocking external catman support, will give you complete peace of mind,
take the stress out of managing your category needs and allow you to focus on running
your business.
Your time is precious and should be spent concentrating on your core business activities like
your staff, costs and most importantly meeting the needs of your customers.
6. Increase Staff Productivity
Using and unlocking external catman support your employees can rely on a dedicated
consultant to diagnose and provide data driven actionable insights. This will speedup
category assessments and evaluations, reduce your data ambiguities and allow staff to
be more productive and strategic by focusing on their core remit.
You may think that you are saving money by investing in non-human resources for your in-
house catman function. The likelihood is your employees are not focusing on their primary

3. roles and are being constantly distracted trying to deal with low priority tasks which
dramatically reduces their productivity and effectiveness.
7. Utilising the Latest Methodology
An outsourced Catman support provider is at the forefront of ECR best practices and
will have a range of partnerships and accreditations with industry leading providers.
They will gain advanced intelligence and training regarding the latest technological
developments and solutions that will be able to help improve your business.
The FMCG landscape is a constantly changing environment and Catman is transforming at a
rapid rate. How do you find out if there is a new/delisted product, software/data upgrade that
may be able to benefit your current operations?
8. Access to Additional Services and Solutions
Your outsourced Catman support provider will have extensive knowledge and
experience in a wide cross-section of categories and specialisms and will rapidly
understand the needs of your business. They will be able to provide you with a range of
value-added services and specialist advice.
Are you worried about your category share? Need a strategic range review plan? Want to
support an increasingly pressured business unit? Need to defend your waning ROS? Need
additional resource to be even more valuable to your retailers?
9. Issue Avoidance
Using and unlocking external catman support your provider can focus on issue
avoidance by proactively monitoring your category performance daily. Problems can be
identified and rectified before they affect your business, virtually eliminating any
surprises and making sure that your products are listed in their core channels.
It is more than likely that your Catman strategy is based on key levers to affect a change in
shopper behaviour. In order for this strategy to remain relevant and current, the 8 steps of
Catman need to be constantly reviewed and revised. This needs human capital, and given
today’s time pressures, Catman For Charity is your solution.