A newspaper and magazine sales forecasting company that has cut waste and improved sales in French stores is looking to deliver the same results in the UK.

BearingPoint’s Demand-Sens Nitro artificial intelligence software uses magazine sales, EPoS and local demographic data to improve publisher forecasting, ensuring the correct number of copies get to the right retailers.

The company’s head of managed services, Jörg Kubenka, told RN it had increased sales volumes in France on national newspapers by 0.8-1.5 percentage points while cutting unsold copy waste by four-to-eight percentage points.

On magazines, sales were increased by 0.5-2.6 percentage points, while waste fell by 2.5-5 percentage points.

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Unlike manual setting of allocations, the software can analyse data from thousands of previous editions alongside localised store information to ensure less unsold copies and less out-of-stocks.

The managing director of distributor trade group Distripress, Lizanne Barber, previously told Better Retailing that companies such as BearingPoint and rivals The Grain could help resolve the problem of smaller stores struggling to receive allocations of smaller, but potentially more lucrative, magazine titles.

Asked about its potential to help improve specialist magazine access for local shops, Kubenka told Better Retailing: “The advantage for small stores is what we see in France and Germany. The interests of the publisher and the retailer are the same, they want to sell copies, and every copy sale is equally valuable, but sometimes these interests aren’t shared by those in the middle of the supply chain.

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“What we are doing builds bridges between the retailer and the publisher, it reduces the reliance on the networks owned by the wholesalers when retailers want to order copies and when publishers want to allocate copies to stores.

“It’s interesting to see this, and it would be frustrating for retailers and publishers to know there are places in the country where magazines are in demand, but aren’t being displayed. We will try to link these up.”

Asked about the company’s interest in working with UK publishers, Kubenka responded: “Yes, definitely.”

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