2013 Warehouse/DC Equipment and Technology Survey: Moving more, spending less - Article from Modern Materials Handling

2013 Warehouse/DC Equipment and Technology Survey: Moving more, spending less - Article from Modern Materials Handling

Supply chain software: Should I upgrade my WMS? - Article from Logistics Management

Supply chain software: Should I upgrade my WMS? - Article from Logistics Management

2012 Gartner Magic Quadrant for WMS

link to WMS magic quadrant 2012

Gartner defines a warehouse management system (WMS) as a software application that manages the operations of a warehouse or distribution center (DC). WMS application functionality includes capabilities such as receiving, put-away, stock locator, inventory management, cycle counting, task interleaving, wave planning, order allocation, order picking, replenishment, packing, shipping, labor management and automated material-handling equipment interfaces (see "Stratifying WMS: A Multilevel View"; note: this document has been archived; some of its content may not reflect current conditions). Radio frequency (RF) systems, used in conjunction with bar codes and possibly RFID, provide the foundation of a WMS, delivering accurate information in real time. We include integrated functionality, such as voice picking, parcel manifesting, value-added services, light manufacturing/kitting and third-party logistics (3PL) billing, as components of a WMS evaluation. This is because many buyers now demand that these components be included in a large number of WMS engagements.

eSourcing 

http://site.agentrics.com/en/solutions/global-sourcing-procurement


Global Sourcing & Procurement optimizes, standardizes, automates and integrates the management and execution of sourcing processes and supply strategies. This enables collaboration among customers, external and internal business partners and suppliers for improvements, including:

• Increased efficiency of purchasing teams and departments;
• Meaningful and sustainable results;
• Enhanced competitive intelligence.

By streamlining the sourcing process and eliminating complexities through full integration, the customer is able to have complete internal and supplier adoption to generate significant savings for a sustainable procurement process year after year. This process partners with immediate time to savings, usually realized with the completion of the first two sourcing events, to bring short term savings and long term value.

The Gartner Supply Chain Top 25 for 2011

http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=213740

Key Findings

• The Top 5 include three mainstays — Apple, Dell and P&G — and two that joined the list for the first time last year—Research In Motion (RIM) and Amazon.
• Four new companies joined the list this year: Nestle, Starbucks, 3M and Kraft Foods.
• Four key themes emerged this year among the leaders, including how they deal with volatility, their approaches to value chain network integration, their focus on sustainable execution and their abilities to orchestrate.

Recommendations

• Develop supply chain processes and methodologies throughout your trading partner network that will provide the resiliency to deliver predictable results in the face of ongoing volatility.
• Supplement a clearly articulated, long-term value chain vision with strong, agile, and sustainable execution capabilities. Push your team to think differently and go beyond conventional wisdom to push the boundaries on performance levels.
• Measure your supply chain as your customers experience it. Develop the capability to internalize customer needs, and proactively build customer feedback into your supply chain design.
• Step back and consider the basic supply chain capabilities you need, as well as the innovations that will differentiate your performance. Ensure the sustainability of your efforts and initiatives through a constant focus on governance, change management and culture.

Toll

I'm doing some consutling work with Toll ( in Melbourne) at the moment.

Toll is the Asian region's leading provider of integrated logistics, generating an annual revenue of AU$8.2 billion and operating an extensive network of over 1,200 sites in 55 countries.
Toll's access to transport and infrastructure assets includes road fleets, warehousing, ships, air freight capacity, ports and rail rolling stock.
These assets when combined with operational expertise and technology solutions, are aimed at driving supply chain efficiencies to deliver best practice in supply chain management for Toll's diverse customer base.

Tolls unique model is built on Toll managing transport and logistics assets to deliver integrated logistics solutions to our customers striving for supply chain excellence. When combined with smart technology connecting all services and interfacing with customers, provides a powerful point of differentiation. This integrated customer service offering is sought after in the market place, globally.

10 tips for retailers on using technology to beat online blues

By Peter Dinham Wednesday, 17 August 2011 23:00 IT Industry - Market

In Australia retailers are facing tough times as consumers keep their money in their pockets, and with new challenges posed for traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ retailers by the dramatic shift to purchasing by consumers of all manner of goods and services from overseas, online retailers. But some tips for using technology to help are at hand.

The help and advice for the hard-pressed retailers in all markets comes from IDC’s Retail Insights team who, in their latest market report recommend their top 10 ways for retailers, using technology to prepare for the holiday shopping season.

According to IDC, navigating the advantages that technology may provide in engaging both loyal and new consumers can determine the difference between retailers' ending the year in the red or in the black.

IDC has come up with what it calls its “four IT-enabled mega-trends” to help retailers make better decisions and to help retail IT organisations prepare, including:

• Cloud for cost and scale advantage

• Mobility for unified consumer interaction

• Omni-channel for same-shopper sales growth, and

• Intelligence for better decisions, to help retail IT organisations prepare for the holiday season.

IDC says retailers can put certain initiatives into practice immediately in the areas of e-commerce, store systems, merchandising, supply chain, and product management.

Leslie Hand, research director, IDC Retail Insights, says that retailers can expect consumers to be very discerning in their holiday shopping this year, and this may result in “continued profit pressure for retailers due to excessive or sub-optimal discounting strategies.”

In addition to managing these risks, Hand says that retailers are also faced with fending off competition, sometimes coming from new sources: blurring segments, direct sales from manufacturers, growing e-commerce sales and new entrants, local niche merchants and social commerce web sites.

And, Hand has an extra word of advice: “Retailers must remember to fix what they can now, and prioritize for post-holiday investment what can't be fixed, so they are not similarly disadvantaged in 2012."

The IDC report begins with recommendations to defend against landed cost fluctuations, and Hand says that “as today's rising commodity prices may, in turn, force increases in prices to consumers at a time when economic uncertainty is causing them to remain highly sensitive to price changes.”

IDC also suggests in its full report that to succeed in the dynamic environment leading up to the holiday season, retailers need to focus simultaneously on better understanding and delivering value to their customers; collaborating with their trading partners by providing visibility into trade promotion performance, pricing, inventory assortment, and shopper behaviour; and continuously managing exceptions to planned costs, adjusting retail price, promotions, and allocations as necessary to optimize sell-through, sales, and margin.

Additional technology initiatives for retailers which IDC addresses, include:

• Ensuring price and promotion engines are ready for holiday traffic

• Improving online retailing conversion rates

• Leveraging social media to boost customer acquisition, retention and conversion

• Creating web sites optimized for mobile retailing

Multi Channel Fulfilment for Retailers

I recently had cause to look at this solution from the IVIS Group.

Smart retailers now understand that gaining the potential benefits of a multichannel strategy - increased market share, increased sales, improved customer equity and reduced costs - takes a lot more than simply expanding the number of channels used to reach customers.

Giving your customers the consistent and rich buying experience they demand means ensuring that your brand, products, promotions and pricing are presented in a coherent way to all customers, whatever channel or mix of

channels they choose to buy from.

Setting up and operating a multi-channel environment opens up huge opportunities but also brings many challenges, principally the need for well managed, consistent and rich information across all channels.

The solution as presented in the IVIS whitepaper assists in:

• Aligning information across channels to ensure a consistent customer experience
• Integrating information - product, price, descriptions, specifications, availability and images - across online and offline channels to increase customer satisfaction
• Delivering cross-channel category management, merchandising and promotions
• Enabling cross-selling and up-selling by optimising the purchasing process from research to browsing and point-of-sale
• Facilitating rapid implementation of new channels, products, partners and processes
• Enabling dynamic promotion of high margin and overstock products while demoting out of stock and uncompetitive products

Multi channel Fulfilment Planning and Forecasting

The objective of Planning and Forecasting is to drive growth and profitability across the business by accurately predicting key performance metrics by channel and managing inventory in line with demand as it changes.

This analysis has shown that the Direct channels of Catalog and Web have significant differences in behaviors, structures and metrics, compared to the Store channel.

To optimize the planning process it is therefore critical to take account of these unique characteristics and treat each channel as distinct selling vehicles to proactively drive demand. An organization also needs cross-channel visibility to trends and the impact of changes in each individual channel on the ability to execute the overall strategic goals. However, trying to plan all channels as if they were the same will only result in a suboptimal plan and lost opportunities.

It is helpful to think about multi-channel planning in a similar way to how a customer shops. The customer expects the overall brand experience to be consistent across Web, Catalog and Store, but each selling vehicle represents a different experience for the shopper in terms of promotional offers, the amount of product information available, merchandise presentation and convenience.

These differences impact the way these channels need to be planned. Trying to support catalog planning or web planning with a store-focused planning process or solution will ultimately compromise customer service and erode profit margins.

Online shopping - The Australian Perspective

Recent articles published in The Age newspaper are giving us a clearer picture of the Australian online market place.

There's a 20 per cent annual increase in the number of people shopping online. The online market is current;y estimated to turnover A$9.5B

Online retailing is here, growing fast and not about to be curtailed.

Read the full article http://www.theage.com.au/business/finally--a-clearer-picture-of-online-shopping-20110729-1i2yl.html#ixzz1TW4vRTcD

The rise & rise of Private Label Retailing

The Global Private Label Mgmt (PLM) trend (as seen in the USA , UK) is well and truly on the rise in Australian Retail. Most big retailers are actively growing their stable of private label products.

Private label used to be less than 5% of revenue but today the targets are up as high as 40+%.

This makes sense if you're in the FMCG sector , pharma sector or any retail arena that has high and competitive volume sales.

But we should also be aware that PLM can deliver;

■ Greater product innovation and brand differentiation

■ Accelerated sales and reduce market lead times

■ Streamlined supply chain working practices

■ Collaborative category management

■ Complete and validated product due diligence

■ One truth database for providing consumer facing information

■ Compliance to legal, ethical, environmental and safety regulations

■ Increased sales volume and reduced time to market

■ Elimination of duplication and waste

■ Control of brand integrity

■ Create a collaborative product development environment for retail colleagues;

■ Collaborate with suppliers and 3rd parties critical to your supply chain, e.g. laboratories or auditors, around one dataset and one lifecycle process;

■ Rapidly increase private label volume without increasing costs;

If you'd like to know more then please contact me or click on the link above..

Australian Retail: Cost reduction solutions

The current lack of retail consumer confidence ( and spend) is hitting retailers hard.

Revenues are down , foot traffic thru stores is down.

The only growth area seems to be Internet sales. Many retailers are looking at cost reduction strategies in order to maintain their margins. This makes good sense as it can deliver immediate savings and also provide a platform for long term process improvements.

In my travels across Aust i see significant interest in eSourcing initiatives being used to lower the cost of goods sold. A strong dollar and strong global trade means that sourcing from Asia and Eastern Europe has never been better value.

All retailers looking for better sourcing for their products should in my opinion look at SaaS based esourcing as a winning solution in these hard times.

Summary . IDC Retail Insights Community . Retail Industry Focused Groups . IDC Insights Community

Summary . IDC Retail Insights Community . Retail Industry Focused Groups . IDC Insights Community

2011 Retail Customer Experience Top 100

CLikc on the link to the retail customer experience website to review a great range of relevant whitepapers

Top results from Multi-Channel Retailing
Cash Automation Devices: How to Choose the Right One for Your Application
Social commerce: What's possible, and what's actually happening
Converging the Retail Experience to Connect with the Changing Shopper
Luxury Apparel Leader Empowers Sales Agents to Thrive, Gets Ready for Growth
Using multichannel customer care to maximize the holiday shopping season
View all Multi-Channel Retailing listings

Top results from Social Media
Social Media: An Inside Look at the People Who Use It
Social commerce: What's possible, and what's actually happening
Automating Social Recruiting for Better Hiring
2011 Retail Customer Experience Top 100
HMV leverages social networking to connect with customers
View all Social Media listings

Top results from Retail - Warehouse
Assisted Selling and the Point of Decision
Increased Productivity with Interactivity
Digital Signage Hardware
Slides: Enhancing the In-Store Experience
Competing for Transactions: Making a Good Impression Pays Off
View all Retail - Warehouse listings


Top results from Online Retailing
Urban Outfitters responds to massive site traffic surge, increases revenues
Social Media: An Inside Look at the People Who Use It
German Retailer Creates New Fashion Shopping Experience
Retain online customers with back-to-basics approach
Ready to Buy: The In-Market Consumer
View all Online Retailing listings

Top results from Retail - Mall
2011 Retail Customer Experience Top 100
75,000 Red LEDs Wrap 7-Story Mall Facade
Sourcing Retail Store Fixtures from China
Top results from Department Stores
Webinar - Mobile Retail: What Comes Next?
The Benefits of Retail Kiosks
2011 Retail Customer Experience Top 100
Sourcing Retail Store Fixtures from China
Self-Service at Supermarkets and Grocery Stores
View all Department Stores listings

Top results from Specialty Stores
Retail digital signage: Rogers Wireless
Growing Beauty Supply Chain Saves Hours, Trims Costs, and Brings in New Revenue
Curiosk wine kiosk offers specialty retailer the expertise of a sommelier
2011 Retail Customer Experience Top 100
Acrilex builds backdrop for Urban Decay products in Sephora stores
View all Specialty Stores listings

Top results from Retail - Convenience Stores
Expanding ATM Usage in a Credit Crunch
Transaction Equipment Corp. Warehouses Speed Customer Service
2011 Retail Customer Experience Top 100
Self-Service at Supermarkets and Grocery Stores
Ten Attributes of a Superior Self-Checkout Solution Environment

5 retail technology trends to watch in 2011

A great article from the retail customer experience website on retail tech trends in 2011.

The shopping outlook for the holiday season seems to be positive. Online sales are expected to have a high single digit year-on-year growth like last year. The highlights have been better product assortment, lower prices, and good promotion strategies. As a result, cross-channel fulfillment and inventory optimization have become imperative to sustain business.

Here are the five big IT trends that will impact retailers in 2011:

In Store Experience: After being at the forefront of technology news for most of 2010, apart from the shopping app, tablet devices such as iPad remain relatively unexplored for the retail world. High-end retailers would look at providing a custom in-store experience for walk-in customers using these tablets. The usability of this tablet could be explored for the store associates/attendants for functionalities such as item search etc. Given the large screen of the tablets, it can prove to be extremely useful in providing a real life experience such as exhibiting products in various colors and viewing merchandise that is otherwise unavailable in stock.

Multi-Channel Fulfillment: Shopping across channels is available as order online and pick-up in store, or order in-store and get it shipped to a delivery address. Despite this becoming a norm in the retail industry, only a few have managed to master it. Thus, multi-channel fulfillment will form the point of convergence for providing a great shopping experience and customer retention, as well as the retailers’ own inventory optimization.

The existing approaches to fulfill this are:

Order online and in-store pick-up
Order in store and delivery at customer address
The retailers who have already successfully implemented these solutions could look at further optimization, such as a combination of both i.e. order online and ship-out from the store. This would reduce shelf life of in-store inventory.

Better Online Experience: Among the indicators of non-conversion of online sales, the most evident one is shopping cart abandonment. There are a few areas of improvement for retailers:

Better sorting, searching, and filtering: A majority of sites are still struggling to provide filtering while multi-options filtering is almost non-existent.
Multi-brand combination in single cart: Multi-brand retailers should be able to combine shopping carts across brands and apply promotion on the complete cart.
Clarity on Price and Delivery rate: Prices and delivery dates should be clearly marked with no ambiguity.
Payment Options: Payment should include more non-credit card options.
Return policies: Return policies should be clearly explained.
Check-out options: A buyer should be able to complete checkout without registering with the seller.
Planning and Forecasting: Profiling of each store and assortment planning are the key areas to optimize inventory in these times. Even though forecasting at the organizational level is pretty common, the implementation of the correct assortment mix at the store level becomes a challenge. In order to obtain better efficiency at the store level, retailers are likely to invest in new products or enhancements to their existing systems. This could range from systems to measure customer mix, customer behavior towards changing in price changes, and promotions in a particular month or quarter of the year.

Mobile Platform: The mobile platform has become an important channel for retailers with the much more advanced smartphone. Smartphone providers such as Apple, Blackberry, or Android have open platforms for development of software applications for their OS. Since mobile phones are discretionary points of spending, retailers are likely to cater to this need with their own shopping applications. These shopping apps are a low-cost investment and can quickly become a popular channel for shopping, provided they have ease of usability and offer hassle-free shopping.

Sharad Singh is pre-sales head and solution architect, retail at MindTree Limited.

Innovate. Differentiate. Profit.

Tech-savvy, fickle consumers and a volatile economy threaten precious margins every day. Being innovative and creating the most differentiated consumer experience wins new and repeat purchases.

Deliver a more alluring consumer experience, drive value chain innovation, and generate profitable growth with innovative technology and retail best practices.

The team at Retail and Supply Chain (RSC) Advocates bring the latest in retail technologies and operational excellence to your business.

We offer:

· Retail consultancy

• End to end professional services and support

• Customer Experience programs

• Business Intelligence solutions

• Multi-channel\ online solutions

• Loyalty and CRM systems

• In store video and TV

• Community TV solutions

• POS systems

• Printers, scanners & utilities

• CCTV, security systems

• Integration services

• Traditional, in store, cloud or web based POS

• Head office, regional or in store retail solutions

• Self service kiosks

• Mobile payment solutions

• Social Media integration

• Shelf talkers

• IT services and support

• Hardware and Software independence

• and much more...

So if you’re interested in:

Improving your margins

Improving your revenues

Reducing your costs

Upgrading your technology

Improving your customer’s retail experience;

then the team, @RSC would love to hear from you,

so please call or email Peter & the RSC team today for a free consultation

Invest Victoria, Melbourne, Australia: Victorian Government Investment Promotion Agency IPA

Invest Victoria, Melbourne, Australia: Victorian Government Investment Promotion Agency IPA

Mystery Shopping - Customer Experience

i was recently given a real insight into the 'behind the scenes' workings of a mystery shopping company.

Very impressive , very labor intensive and very interesting all round if i do say..

The technology and solutions offering seem to best suit, high volume customer focused companies with 100's of retail outlets, like telco's, large food franchise that have a very competitive market place.

If you've not looked at this area before i would recommend you do.

Melbourne Point Of Sale

i met up with a POS vendor yesterday - MELBOURNE POS .

Very impressive product, great functionality, very knowledgeable team and a well priced solution.

They work mainly with HP hardware.

If you have a moment check out the link. http://www.melbournepos.com.au/

The health of the Retail Sector in Australia

I have a potential concern with the health of the Australian retail sector at the moment.
Its just a few weeks to Christmas and the shopping mall of Australia should be buzzing..
But the mall and shops seem to be, ( at least to me, ) quiet.
And behind the scenes cost cutting measures are in place in many of the large retailers.
Companies are announcing head count freezes, delaying projects and everybody seems to be preparing for soft sales numbers during this period.

Lets hope it will all rebound in 2011.