Consumer Efficiency Improvements

The recent changes in consumer shopping habits are more than anything an improvement in consumer efficiencies to shop and purchase.  These changes embraced by consumers more than anything show the overwhelming desire for consumers to spend less time in the physical shopping activities and complete their purchasing more efficiently and more cost effectively.  The retail omni channel shopping and purchasing changes are at a very basic level a search by consumers to increase shopping efficiencies in support of their lifestyle demands.  Consumers require efficiencies in their shopping so they can spend more time on activities that give them pleasure and the opportunity to spend more time with their family.  Retail shopping in the brick and mortar store is not an opportunity for families to spend time together, it is a necessary activity for families to support other more enjoyable family activities.

These consumer objectives have been at odds with the retailer objectives for quite some time and only changed when the technology and wireless capabilities available to consumers approved to a point where these consumers could create their own marketplace for shopping and purchasing that meet their needs.  These capabilities frankly caught many retailers by surprise because the retailers were so intent on their own requirements and unfortunately for these retailers they did not follow the consumer changes to their logical ends.  In fact this process of consumer changes has not ended, it is going to continue and the rate and velocity of these changes will increase.  

Retailers are now beginning to realize these demands will not stop and will not slow down and are beginning to take measures to address.  These retailers are now taking steps to address these demands and as a result improve their relationship with consumers.  I have seen the changes in my interactions with many retailers this holiday shopping season in my interactions with retailers and also via news reports of retailer modifications to shopping and purchasing capabilities.  Another area this year showing real improvements has been in transportation and parcel shipping direct to consumers.  Parcel carriers are also taking important steps to improve both their capabilities and interactions with consumers in delivery coordination and notification.

I personally noticed a big difference this year in the manner and options to shop and purchase Christmas gifts and these new virtual shopping and purchasing capabilities have produced a greatly reduced stress level in shopping.  In fact when I shop in stores now I really notice the impact on my personal time and frustration.  This encourages me to focus more on eCommerce shopping and also in my limited brick and mortar shopping I have a tendency to focus on retailers that blend their virtual and physical shopping experience to simplify the purchase.

And now for the audience participation portion of the show…

ECommerce will have wide ranging impacts on both the retail and manufacturing sectors.  How can you focus these abilities to improve the consumer's experience?  Improving the consumer’s experience will require a re-evaluation of the sales channels, the manufacturing channels and practices and the supply chain channels and practices from the raw materials to the consumers’ homes.  In order to ensure and maintain success in this new reality you must harness the tools and capabilities in many new areas.  How can you support these continuously changing requirements?

Retail Fulfillment Efficiencies

One of the benefits that can be realized in the omni channel retail market is improved efficiencies in fulfillment, both to the end customer and also the brick and mortar stores.  This was not one of the original objectives or probably even one of the original potential opportunity identified by retailers however the changing consumer demands in developing and omni channel marketplace provided this opportunity for retailers to flatten and standardize their fulfillment practices across channels to gain dramatic efficiencies.  These efficiencies will provide long term improvements in both the fulfillment costs and delivery efficiencies due to the expansion of fulfillment across the entire retail network of brick and mortar stores, distribution centers and supplier drop ship programs.

Retailers must take a broad view of options and opportunities in order to increase the fulfillment efficiencies and increase both services and savings.  Retailers must view the fulfillment demands not only across channels but also across delivery demands.  This requires a paradigm shift in how retail stores and distribution centers are viewed in the omni channel marketplace.  The fulfillment demands and comparisons between store replenishment and customer direct delivery are converging and this means that retailers must view the fulfillment not from a channel but from the process required to support the business and consumer fulfillment demands.  

The fulfillment demands require that retailers expand the functionality supported in brick and mortar stores to include direct to consumer fulfillment.  The fulfillment demands require that retailers finally revise their inventory view and management practices to support sales across all delivery methods from one pool of inventory.  Retailers can greatly improve their delivery service levels and transportation costs by expanding capabilities in the stores to include direct to consumer shipments from the store.  This simple practice will reduce overall transportation costs and service levels because the spectrum of zone one deliveries will expand as well to reduce the overall transportation costs.

These are not difficult changes, in fact these changes should be accepted and a recognition of the new reality that consumers are creating to support their own lifestyles.  Retailers now must view and identify methods to support consumer demands rather than attempting to bend consumers to the processes and methods that simplify the retailer’s practices.  Consumers will no longer accept limitations from retailers because there are too many options and competitors vying for sales.  Large retailers must change their fulfillment methods to meet these demands and the resulting changes can be implemented to improve both inventory management  and also improve fulfillment efficiencies and costs.   

And now for the audience participation portion of the show…

ECommerce will have wide ranging impacts on both the retail and manufacturing sectors.  How can you focus these abilities to improve the consumer's experience?  Improving the consumer’s experience will require a re-evaluation of the sales channels, the manufacturing channels and practices and the supply chain channels and practices from the raw materials to the consumers’ homes.  In order to ensure and maintain success in this new reality you must harness the tools and capabilities in many new areas.  How can you support these continuously changing requirements?

Mobile Business Continuity

Mobile technology integration and consumer collaboration has become a very large piece of the retail toolset and because of this increase in utilization and importance it is very important for retailers to develop a robust business continuity plan to recover in the event of an event that compromises these capabilities.  It is only a matter of time before an event impacts the access or the historical archives developed by the mobile business practices and retailers must be prepared for the loss of functionality, loss of data and recovery requirements.  The retailer must include in their business continuity planning and reviews a critical section for recovery of the mobile business practices, even though in many cases these processes are support via cloud based technology.  

In most cases I believe that mobile technology is utilized as a portal or interface to the corporate data, in other words the mobile technology provides access to business processes supported behind the retailers firewall.  However I also believe that more and more retailers utilize cloud technologies and data stores to support the mobile and eCommerce solutions, especially as it related to social networking and interaction with the consumer.  These are the areas of concern and must be reviewed on a regular basis to identify potential points of failure and recovery procedures.  These recovery procedures become much more complex because of the interaction with external partners and service providers.  

Supply chain partners and service provider collaboration and especially the mobile collaboration activities must also be evaluated for points of failures and business recovery procedures.  The recovery procedures and timeframes become much more complicated as the technology platforms and the number of partners increase because of the complexity inherent in the interactions and dependencies on business processes with partners.  The interaction between partners and the expectation of data and process availability will provide the greatest risk to any partner business continuity and these interactions and dependencies must be reviewed on a regular basis to confirm recovery procedures.

The retail marketplace is a fast paced environment with a very high rate of change across many platforms and partners.  This environment increases the complexity of the business relationships and also the complexity of the business continuity planning and implementation.  It is very easy in this type of environment for retailers to overlook the need to account for the business continuity requirements as they are reacting to the consumer’s changing demands.  This is the most important reason though to account for business continuity planning because when there is an event that requires quick response to recover the retailer cannot afford to lose hours or days in recovery, especially during a busy holiday season.   

And now for the audience participation portion of the show…

ECommerce will have wide ranging impacts on both the retail and manufacturing sectors.  How can you focus these abilities to improve the consumer's experience?  Improving the consumer’s experience will require a re-evaluation of the sales channels, the manufacturing channels and practices and the supply chain channels and practices from the raw materials to the consumers’ homes.  In order to ensure and maintain success in this new reality you must harness the tools and capabilities in many new areas.  How can you support these continuously changing requirements?