RETAIL
Retail is the sale of goods or commodities, typically from a fixed location such as a store or kiosk, in small quantities directly to consumers. Attevo's clients may primarily focus on the retail business, or retail may be a component of a larger, vertically integrated organization.
Business challenges
Retailers around the world are faced with the challenge of providing excellent customer satisfaction while increasing sales and controlling costs. Like all organizations they want to improve operating effectiveness, strengthen financial performance and increase the total value of their business. Retailers want to be able to "do more with less" and operationally support branding initiatives that result in increased customer loyalty and the acquisition of new customers.
Market forces create a challenging business climate and many retailers are constrained in their ability to grow and maintain profit margins. Pressures include new and sophisticated competition, more complex operating environments, market saturation, changing customer demographics and a more discerning yet less loyal consumer base.
World economies experience cyclical market conditions and opportunities emerge to create competitive advantage from effectively leveraging new technologies. For example, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology is transforming the retail industry by offering retailers real-time visibility into inventory and product movement to improve store productivity and revenue while minimizing loss or shrinkage. Many of the world's largest retailers have mandated RFID tagging, affecting more than 200,000 manufacturers and suppliers. RFID provides the ability to identify the location of each and every item without having to see it. This offers tremendous improvements in inventory management, allowing retailers to provide the right product in the right place at the right time. Keeping inventory to a minimum while avoiding "stock-outs" is one of the biggest challenges faced by all retailers.
Disparate data causes problems for most retailers. Data is frequently stored separately for catalog, store and online business channels, as well as by product line, manufacturer and department. Accessing and extracting valuable information from these areas to make key decisions becomes extremely difficult. Retailers need greater visibility of channel information to support their business decisions. They need new ways to examine their data - to identify their most profitable customers, understand their characteristics and determine the most economical path to acquiring more of these customers. They need to understand key products to support up-selling and cross-selling opportunities to generate more revenue from existing sales. The challenge is to gain valuable intelligence by analyzing the right data at the right time.
An important but difficult task for retailers is building and maintaining a demand-signal repository. This repository is an integral part of an enterprise data management strategy that correlates financial, product, RFID and other supply-chain data with customer demand to drive market share and margins.
Creating a data c arrier
As the number of alternative sales channels increases and competition grows, successful multi-channel retailers use technology effectively throughout their extended organization. This includes their supply chain, resellers and other partners, and internally to acquire business intelligence for faster and better decision making. Channel conflict must also be addressed as there is a blurring of roles between suppliers and retailers.
One of the most significant pressures on the retail industry comes from heightened regulation which requires greater accountability and accuracy in the reporting of financial results, increased levels of corporate governance, stronger internal documentation and more effective risk practices.
Attevo solutions
Attevo consultants understand the challenges faced in the retail environment. Business solutions designed and implemented by Attevo consultants include:
- Integration of customer relationship management and business intelligence solutions
- Real-time visibility of store activity to pinpoint areas for productivity reviews and training
- Real-time data capture and analysis for improvements in supply chain operations, loss prevention and fraud reduction
Attevo offers a collaborative consulting approach with the tools and knowledge for strategic planning, application development and complete systems integration. Attevo is able to assist clients on any legacy platform and provide services in cross-platform migration, pilot support and maintenance.
Attevo works with many leading industry partners when providing solutions to the retail industry, including:
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Benefits
- In-depth understanding of the challenges and issues facing retailers
- World-class expertise in emerging technologies such as RFID
- Clearly defined solutions using proven technologies and tools
To speak with an Attevo consultant, please email us or telephone us at one of our office locations.
