Today’s retail environment presents an ever-changing landscape. New channels, markets and international competition constantly introduce fresh challenges that turn great processes into legacy operations. Are you in a position to take advantage of the next opportunity whenever it presents itself? International expansion, new channels, brand differentiation and partnership opportunities require retailers to have the agility to act – and act fast.
In addition to changing market conditions, retailers are faced with the need to be increasingly transparent, to take responsibility for social and ethical compliance, to provide evidence of compliance and will soon be required to make this information available to their customers. While it is your choice whether to accept business growth opportunities, regulatory and social expectations may force change.
So how do you respond to these challenges? Can your business react? Do you know what your challenges will be when it’s time to address the next big change?
Retailers often struggle to react due to a lack of visibility from inspiration to in-store. Clarity on what is coming and when is only realised as a purchase order is raised in an ERP (enterprise resource planning) system, which is too late to make changes. A lot of work was done before the purchase order was created, but this is often hidden in a mix of systems, spreadsheets and e-mails. These information silos mean that retailers don’t have visibility of their processes and therefore don’t know what problems they will have until they have attempted to change the business… then the existing process breaks.
When this is achieved the results are significant, and include faster time to market, better margins, high on-time delivery and improved quality
This lack of visibility is difficult to fix as there are many individuals and organisations involved in the development and sourcing of products, and this process is highly collaborative. To truly gain control, it is necessary to have everyone involved in the process, whether it’s internal buying, design and sourcing teams or external suppliers, channel partners and franchisees, to work together on one version of the truth.
When this is achieved the results are significant, and include faster time to market, better margins, high on-time delivery and improved quality. But more than anything, it is the ability to see what is really going on and therefore the ability to see the bottlenecks in your existing approach.
Retailers are innovative and competitive, but also collaborative. They appreciate learning from each other and seeking guidance on what has worked and what hasn’t for their organisations, especially when it comes to technology. For this reason TradeStone has taken its work with more than 50,000 global users and years of experience in simplifying retail supply chains to provide Best Practices for Driving Growth through Collaborative Product Lifecycle Management.
Contact TradeStone to find out how these Best Practices have helped global retailers respond rapidly to the dynamic retail environment and to look at how your business could effectively apply these practices to ensure your organisation is ready to react to the next big challenge.
E-mail info@tradestonesoftware.com or call +44 1628 509 060 to learn more.
