Spring - InsideOutdoor Magazine

owth Around the Globe
picture. 15.4% Incidentally, among the “retail winners”
12.8% surveyed by Retail Systems Research,
11.2% defined as those retail companies that outperform
the pack in a number of key performance
10.6%
10.4%
10.4% indicators, virtually none cited the economy as
9.7% their biggest challenge, says Kilcourse.
9.6%
“Gas may be at an all-time high and projected
to climb in the next few weeks, and [the
8.9%
7.9%
7.7% consumer] may have to trade down in product
7.2%
quality, but she still expects retailers to know
7.1%
.6%
her and cater to her needs,” says Paula Rosenblum,
Retail Systems Research analyst.
%
One upshot of this transition to “demandbased
management” (what the customer
wants versus what the customer is forced to
purchase) is an increasing investment in the
management of customer data and the ability
to react to real-time information. Customer
data will be used not just for marketing and
mailings or to identify best customers but will
become a key asset to retailers, says Pollock,
directly tied to inventory planning, anticipating
customers’ desires and managing the business
through business intelligence.
10 It 15 also will require 20 whole new levels of vendor
collaboration and total visibility. And, of course,
d
higher levels of security will be a prerequisite.
“Demand-based management can succeed only
with real-time data information delivered through
increasingly newer forms of technology delivery systems,”
says PwC and TNS Retail Forward.
iving the Use
Meanwhile, retail brands that provide access to the
cross-channel fulfillment, say RSR surveys. Among
those that don’t, the top organizational inhibitor currently
presenting a barrier to becoming an efficient
multi-channel retailer was legacy technologies.
Again, this is more than online sales versus brick
Top Concerns/Challenges that SMB Retailers Say They Face
and mortar sales. Rather, Pollock and her peers fully
expect a melding of the two. In the coming decade,
they Real-Time argue, Visibility online efficiencies and automation will
iness Intelligence
same information and inventory through multiple channels
will have a distinct competitive advantage, Kil-
all manner of interactive kiosks and digital media,
Throughout be introduced the organizationinto the brick-and-mortar world, and
High Staff Turnover
course suggests. “Multi-channel retailing has become inextricably
intertwined with consumers’ sense of what a nectivity will bring unprecedented levels of infor-
smart carts, location-based advertising and IP con-
retailer’s brand value is relative to their lifestyle needs.” mation-delivery Capital Constraints and extended product accessibility
Already, more than 60 percent of “retail winners,” directly to the sales floor, even to the point of creating
“endless aisles.”
as defined by Retail Systems Research, say they enable
Store-Level IT Investment
“Interactions will be increasingly natural, such as
Technology Enablers for
voice activation,” say PwC and TNS analysts. “Selfactivated
Expectations agents will perform routine tasks without
Meeting High Customer
More Customer-Centric Approach
Must be capable of capturing accurate human intervention.”
Modern POS
product and customer information on each It’s a lot to keep 0 10 20 30 40 50 60
tabs on, for sure. Managing complexity
and diversity in a business that Percentage must span of the Respondents globe
transaction
Channel transparency
“One view” of the customers across all
channels
while also SMBreaching out
All
to
Retailers
“the niche of one” presents a
huge challenge for retailers both large and small.
Winners reduce or even eliminate data and
Continuous updates analytic latencies, starting with continuous
Source: An unstable Gartner Group economy doesn’t make things easier,
0 0.5 1feeds from selling environment
and likely will lead to longer sales cycles for retail
No Influence
technology vendors and more due diligence on the
Segregated data
Used for subsequent analysis (reduces
impact on transaction systems)
part of retailers.
Retail winners, however, are fully aware that in
Simply GUI
Retailers want an interface that has the
look and feel of a spreadsheet
both How the Winners worst of Focus times on and Customer-Centricity
the best of times, focus
Provide canned reports
Winners generate regular production of
standard reports from production systems
using “reporting tools”
Source: Retail Systems Research
See to Improve
18 | InsideOutdoor | Spring 2008
Channels
Multi-channel Initiative that Have or Could Have Impact
Ensuring product information
and pricing is up to date and
consistent across channels
Enabling cross-channel
fulfillment
Cross selling and
personalized promotions
Same day shipping & simple,
consistent returns
Synchronizing customer
and inventory information
across channels
Enabling real time views of
cross-channel inventory
Information sharing with
merchandise vendors on
product features and availability
Winners
Source: Retail Systems Research
0 20% 40% 60% 80%
Others
Future Potential (all)
must remain on serving the customer. And in a world
Educate and empower
of our constant in-store employees connectivity and seemingly endless options,
using technologywill play an increasingly important
role in Add customer self-service centricity.
customer-facing Technologies
It’s all about our product
mix. If we build it, they
will come.
67%
67%
81%
80%
86%
90%