News

19-10-2009 Fifth Dimension announces the release of Virtual Shelf version 4.5

Fifth Dimension announces the release of Virtual Shelf version 4.5, their advanced planogramming application. Building on Virtual Shelf’s well established lead in photorealistic merchandising display planning, the new version brings several innovations designed to deliver:-

• faster creation of new and revised planograms
• revolutionary drag and drop charting and reporting for easy analysis
• advanced planogram and performance analysis
• rapid publishing of planograms in store briefing pack layouts
• realogram creation facilities for rapid in-store capture of displays
• advanced planogram comparison capabilities
• automatic fixture, range and display compliance analysis
• automatic calculation of in-store labour costing for new planograms

Sainsbury’s recently adopted Virtual Shelf.  Ian Hidden, Seasonal & Promotional Ranging Manager, says:-

“… The team are thrilled with the software and I’m getting really good feedback.
As you know, Sainsbury’s need to create high quality promotional communications for our stores, by way of visually rich planograms.  A great deal of promotional information goes out on a weekly basis, so we needed a new planogramming tool that was easy to use and exceptionally quick. We also needed something that allowed us to easily add POS to the plans directly from digital artwork.  Virtual Shelf has solved all those issues and helped us take a great step forward in store communications.

The team has also set up data imports from our spreadsheets and are creating new plans for buyer sign off in record time.  The high quality of the renders that it creates is also a big win.  The buyers are able to distinguish the products easily and this in turn speeds up their sign off process and the stores find it easier and quicker to implement the plans. We are now exploring all the other new facilities in the latest release, especially the new planogram comparison and compliance reporting and charting tools.

Another thing that has really helped us is the new Planogram Publisher feature.  Thank you for your support setting up the publishing templates, we now automatically output our new and updated plans in exactly the right format without any manual intervention and this speeds up the sign off process with Retail Ops as well as simplifying distribution to store….. “

Virtual Shelf is just one application in Fifth Dimension’s extensive portfolio of Store, Aisle and Shelf Display planning and performance optimisation software. For more information, contact Tony Jerodiaconou at +44 (0)1908 327650 or visit our web site at www.fifth.uk.com