Building A Platform For Retail Success

By RedPrairie

The retail industry has suffered from a lack of continuity in supporting business processes with application systems. Retailers have often developed systems to address specific needs or purchased point solutions with little thought to the benefits an integrated approach could offer to overall retail success. As a result, labor is wasted, revenue opportunities are lost, and the customer experience is less than it could be. All because the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing.

This problem is most evident within the retail store. With the increasing importance of promotions and pricing strategies to revenue goals, the amount of corporately assigned tasks store managers must work into staffing schedules, while also accounting for the expected uplift in traffic these programs produce, has become overwhelming. Therefore, this is an excellent area to begin building an integrated approach to retail systems support.

Execution Management applications have proven to increase sales revenue and decrease costs by ensuring corporate merchandising initiatives are rolled out on a timely basis across all stores. In addition, the marketplace has begun to realize that an integrated Execution Management – Workforce Management approach can add even greater value than the sum of the parts. Similarly, tying inventory forecasting and replenishment capabilities to Execution Management will better fulfill the ultimate vision of improved merchandising operations.