The items and the assortments are determined according to a collaborative process that involves the buyers of Agorà Network Milan office and category managers who work on the sales networks. This process is supported by a proprietary information system. The procedures were generated after the completion of a study originated from a collaboration with university scholars and developed through the analysis and according to the proposals of a working group composed of employees working in the marketing and sales functions of Agorà Network and the member companies, industrialised thanks to the consultancy by Accenture and by using business intelligence and data warehousing tools. This procedure, which we call Category Watcher, collects the sales data of each brand/format/store, summarises the performances related to the role assigned to the single category/store into a single index number, compares them with the data from the rest of the network, from the networks of other members and the market for the reference areas. It highlights the opportunities to be seized in the event of change of assortments and performs simulations of the effectiveness of the actions planned. The buyers are therefore receptive to the inputs from the world of industry, the category managers are analysts who represent the needs expressed by the networks; the decisions on the formation of the product mixes are made by agreement between these corporate functions. Today Agorà Network manages a rich catalogue of 16,500 grocery and cold food products.