The Hidden Cost of Silos: Why Retail Deduction Recovery Demands a Bigger Lens

If you’ve ever worked inside a large CPG company or broker, you know the drill: each retailer gets its own team, its own systems, and its own way of doing business. There’s a Walmart team. A Kroger team. A Costco team. A Publix team. Each one has its own processes, reports, and internal language.

At first glance, that structure makes sense. After all, every retailer plays by different rules. But here’s the problem: those silos create blind spots at the top. And in the world of retail deduction recovery, blind spots get expensive.

Silos Hide the True Cost of Retail Deductions

Imagine being a CFO trying to get a clean picture of total deductions across your $1B portfolio.

The Walmart team sees shortages. Kroger’s team sees compliance. Publix is battling excessive defectives. Costco has its own unique set of post-audit deductions.

Each team reports in isolation. And because the data lives in different systems—or even just different spreadsheets—no one is connecting the dots. Leaders see fragments, not the whole picture.

What gets lost? The cumulative impact. That $400K in shortages from Walmart and $250K in compliance penalties from Kroger might seem like separate issues. But when you zoom out, you realize they’re symptoms of the same root cause—an operational glitch in how pallets are being packed at the DC level.

Without a holistic view, companies treat the symptoms rather than addressing the root cause of the problem.

Why a Wider Lens Matters

Retailers are betting on this fragmentation. They know that when your organization can’t see deductions across the enterprise, it’s harder to fight back. Dispute windows close.

Documentation gets lost. Teams waste time reinventing the wheel for each retailer.

This is where an outside partner like HRG makes a difference. We’re not locked into retailer-specific silos. We see deduction data across an entire organization—spanning Walmart, Kroger, Costco, Publix, and beyond.

That perspective matters. Because deductions that look random in one silo often reveal a clear pattern when viewed together.

From Deduction Recovery to Prevention

Here’s a fictional—but all too familiar—example:

A mid-sized CPG supplier thought their biggest deduction problem was at Kroger. Their Kroger team reported constant OTIF penalties, adding up to hundreds of thousands each year. But when HRG looked across the entire organization, we saw the same issues popping up at Walmart and Publix—different codes, exact

root cause.

The fix wasn’t a Kroger-specific solution. It was an enterprise-wide process change in how carriers were booked and confirmed. Once that gap was closed, deductions dropped across every retailer at once.

That’s the power of perspective.

The Bottom Line

Retail silos protect information. But they also protect problems. And when leadership can’t see the full picture, retail deductions quietly chip away at margins.

HRG gives companies a wider lens. By connecting deduction data across retailers, we don’t just recover lost dollars—we prevent future losses. And in today’s margin-thin retail world, that’s the difference between playing defense and gaining ground.

Tired of siloed reports and incomplete stories? Let HRG show you the whole picture—and help you recover what’s rightfully yours.

Book a call