Retail Management & SCM
Retail Management & SCM
Abstract: Retailing involves a direct interface with the customer and the coordination of business activities from end to end right from the concept or design stage of a product or offering, to its delivery and post-delivery service to the customer. The industry has contributed to the economic growth of many countries and is undoubtedly one of the fastest changing and dynamic industries in the world today. Today retail industry in India is one of the Industries with highest returns which have grown because of various factors like high disposable income, increased proportion of working women etc. .
1.0 INTRODUCTION
Supply chain management (SCM) is the management of a network of interconnected businesses involved in the ultimate provision of product and service packages required by end customers. Supply chain management spans all movement and storage of raw materials, workin-process inventory, and finished goods from point of origin to point of consumption (supply chain). SCM is also called the art of management of providing the Right Product, At the Right Time, Right Place and at the Right Cost to the Customer. SCM encompasses firms activities at many levels, from strategic through the tactical to the operational level. The strategic level deals with long term decisions, regarding location, production, inventory, and transportation. Tactical level deals with level medium term decisions, such as purchasing and production decisions, inventory policies and transportation strategies. The operational level of SC management is concerned with the very short term decisions, such as scheduling, lead time, routing and truck loading. Retailing comprises about 40% of the U.S. economy, and is a major economic engine of the world economy. While the retail sector has always been very competitive, in recent years, the competitive nature of the field has increased dramatically. Customers too have become more exacting, demanding ever-increasing levels of service. Retailers have responded by increasing the variety of their products, becoming more price competitive, striving towards higher service levels, and utilizing advances in computing capabilities and information technologies to improve their supply chain efficiency. However, these developments have also greatly increased the
complexity of managing the retail business environment. Consequently, most retailers have struggled to maintain profitability. Rigorous analytical methods have emerged as the most promising solution to many of these complex problems. Indeed, the retail industry has emerged as a fascinating choice for researchers in the field of supply chain management.
Retail Management System targets small and midsize retailers seeking to automate their stores. The package runs on personal computers to manage a range of store operations and customer marketing tasks, including point of sale; operations; inventory control and tracking; pricing; sales and promotions; customer management and marketing; employee management; customized reports; and information security. The emergence of new sectors has been accompanied by changes in existing formats as well as the beginning of new formats: Hyper marts Large supermarkets, typically 3,500-5,000 sq. ft. Mini supermarkets, typically 1,000-2,000 sq. ft. Convenience stores, typically 750-1,000sq. ft. Discount/shopping list grocer
The traditional grocers, by introducing self-service formats as well as value-added services such as credit and home delivery, have tried to redefine themselves. However, the boom in retailing has been confined primarily to the urban markets in the country. Even there, large chunks are yet to feel the impact of organized retailing. There are two primary reasons for this. First, the modern retailer is yet to feel the saturation' effect in the urban market and has, therefore, probably not looked at the other markets as seriously. Second, the modern retailing trend, despite its cost-effectiveness, has come to be identified with lifestyles. In order to appeal to all classes of the society, retail stores would have to identify with different lifestyles. In a sense, this trend is already visible with the emergence of stores with an essentially `value for money' image.
The attractiveness of the other stores actually appeals to the existing affluent class as well as those who lines of the economic evolution of society.
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these distribution networks including warehouses, cold chains and truck/ multi model services connecting these locations. Investments are being made in warehouses and hubs by Indian corporate. Regulatory Aspects: A point that kept emerging in various discussion with the retailers was the dated regulation in the country. For example Weights and Measures Act expects all goods to be available in the factory packed form in the stores. Similarly Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) Acts consider even small volume purchase to qualify as wholesale deals. These are also variation among states with respect to aspects like store timings. All these are hindrances that can restrict rapid growth of retailing in India. Skilled Retail Personnel: A key concern has been the expected shortfall of trained manpower to meet expansion plan. With increasing competition from the ITeS industry, retail manpower shortage could become a critical bottleneck that limits players expansion plans. Individual players are taking proactive measures like providing on-the-job training setting up retail academies etc to ensure availability of people with the right skillsets. However, the industry as a would need to step forward and put in place measures to deal with the critical gap.
Advanced Planning and Scheduling Systems: APS systems can provide improved control across the supply chain, all the way from raw material supplier right through to the retail shelf. These APS packages existing (but often limited) ERP packages. They enable consolidations such as long term budgeting monthly forecasting weekly factory scheduling and daily distribution scheduling into one overall planning process using a single set of data. Leading manufactures distributers and retailers and considering APS packages such as those from i2, Manugistics, Bann, MerciaLincs and Strling Douglas.
corporate spend. Current margin pressure are severe, and supply chain performance is focused increasingly on the overall business impact and shareholder value.
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metrics, standardizing business processes and practices training staff and integrating technology all in hopes of developing a low-cost supply chain that competitively positions the organization for the future. 1. Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment (CPFR): Retailers are increased in finding ways to reduce inventories and improve their ability to both anticipate and fulfill consumer demand. They are improving their forecasting and merchandise planning activities and finding ways to work with manufacturers and suppliers to reduce cycle times and inventories the entire supply chain. They are also looking at ways to replenish inventory rapidly through auto-replenishment tools and ways to improve working capital such as Scan-Based Trading, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) assessment. Retailers are assessing and in some cases piloting RFID technology. They are closely watching Wal-Mart and other key retailers to determine the readiness of the technology and the success of rollout efforts. More importantly, they are developing their own business cases to link the use of RFID technology to business benefits and implementation costs. Concerns, while minor, are mostly associated with privacy issues for example, the extent to which retailers have knowledge about the products consumers have in their homes. 2. Buying Optimization: Retail organizations are performing strategic sourcing reviews streamlining their buying practices and policies and investigating the potential for e procurement technologies, particularly for non-merchandise spend. These projects tend to be low-risk but are associated with high reduction in uncontrolled, unapproved spending from 5 per cent to 30 per cent; bulk discount savings of up to 20 per cent; and significant reduction in administrative costs. They are also continuing to review their merchandise buying practices and looking for way to reduce costs improve inventory levels and better manage their base of suppliers. This is particularly important for Canadian retailers who are sourcing products from around the globe. 3. Data Synchronization: Retailers are also looking at ways to synchronize their data with that of their trading partners. It has been shown that inaccuracies in the supply chain contribute to approximately 10 to 15 per cent of total out-of-stocks. In addition standards in data synchronization such as UCC net and ECC net have created a common way for retailers and manufacturers to define product and pricing information. Data synchronization enables rapid purchase order and invoice recondition, eliminates data re-entry and reduces catalogue errors. 4. Reviewing Supply chain network infrastructure: Revisiting the supply chain network is no small feat. Few retailers are increased in reviewing the cost-effectiveness and service levels supplied by distribution centers to retailers. This process normally involves utilization of sophisticated algorithms that take large amounts of data and determine cost and benefits of alternative network designs. These are other retailers who are constructing new distribution centers to support their growth and productivity objectives. 5. Outsourcing non-care functions: At a macro level, the retail industry has not yet unlike other industries, outsourced core business processes such as human resources. However, retailers have outsourced supply chain functions and continue to outsource application management services (not complete outsourcing of information technology, but rather outsourcing of selected application support functions, such as help desk) 6. Legacy application replacement: Some retailers are running portions of their supply chain with custom- developed applications, but more and more of these custom applications are being replaced with packaged with software applications. 7. Supply chain visibility / information flow: Retailers are looking for ways to improve supply chain visibility across the entire pipeline. Supply chain event management tools have provided the capability to view end-to-end view can help identify bottlenecks for
product and information flow, allowing appropriate resolution to take place. Supply chain processes automation. Many supply chain automation applications new exist in retail. Automated data collection is a common application due to the increased use of data collection devices and the high penetration of data warehouse. Also many technologies in the logistics space- such as robotics have improved productivity dramatically justifying their initial capital expenditure While some of these initiatives the implementation of technology retailers are developing business cases to support changes to their supply chain environment. The technology initiatives are usually preceded by a business process improvement initiative and subsequent business case linking the identified process and organizational changes with the technology implementation.
Marketplace and exchanges: There are a number of market place that can be utilized to improve supply chain management. Transportation organizations such as the National Transportation Exchange (NTE) and Freight wise provide a mechanism for retailers and manufacturers to buy action transportation space Simple auction marketplace such as eBay are being used to sell close-out or defective but saleable inventory and supplies no longer required by retailers. The World Wide Retail Exchange (WWRE) offers members functionality such as collaboration data synchronization, negotiations and auctions, demand aggregation, and order management. 6. Procurement tools: While some of the broader off-the-shelf products from JDA, Retek and SAP offer procurement functionality and Web tools to assist in the procurement process, other more specialized e-procurement tools exist (e.g., Ariba, which is being used by STAPLES Business Depot, Target and Hallmark) 7. Data synchronization: As is the case with other areas some of the broader application solutions such as SAP, JDA, Synchra and i2 offer solutions for data synchronization. ECCnet offers retailers a standardized online forum for data, images and bar code communication. Other marketplace tools are offered by Trigo, Lansa and IBM (Web sphere Business Integrator and Crossworlds) 8. RFID: Radio Frequency is a highly popular topic for supply chain professional. The concept of tagging pallets, cases and items with a radio frequency- enabled tag that can be read immediately and enable read-time tracking of product throughout the supply chain is a concept that is expected to transform supply chain management as we know it today. Third party logistics is not a tool in terms of application software but is worth mentioning because it can enable improvements in supply chain. A number of retailers have already outsourced a portion of their supply chain to a third party logistics organizations. An outsourcing relationship, if properly managed can benefit a retailer in terms of improving service levels while reducing overall costs.
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growth of networked value chains. Retailers are already sourcing global products and increasing their use of partners for areas such as logistics, transportation and distribution. Driving this trend is the imperative to not only seek unit cost advantage and secure best market capabilities but also to share risks with partners and create a pay-as-you-use variable supply chain model. Operations excellence in managing all supply chain functions remains a foundation for any world-class supply chain. However a new perspective on operations excellence is required not only is what a company dies but also in what a companys supply chain partners do and how a business orchestrates them. Dynamic Global Sourcing and Demand synchronization: Global sourcing patterns will continue to shift dynamically in search of lower cost sources. In addition retailers will continue to rationalize and harmonize their own global value chain resources in search of more efficient and effective means of satisfying global customer demands. Fast flexible efficient and transparent response to changing customer demands and supply shocks remains the goal for supply chain management and will be essential to compete in this new world. Use of emerging technologies: Innovative new technologies (such as RPFD) continue to emerge that enhance and transform supply chain capabilities and afford new ways to deliver and finance technology infrastructure on a pay-as-you-use basis. This type of model will be a critical enabler that delivers new capabilities, enhance ROI and supports fast modular implementation of supply chain concept across multiple value chain partners. For example a major retailer created a supply chain that is driven by customer demand and supply chain events. The first to implement supplier electronic collaboration which was extend to Value Managed Inventory (VMI) this company is new using RFID tags and scanners for inventory management, auto replenishment and loss prevention.
10.0 CONCLUSION
During the past few decades, retailers have been facing increasing competitive pressures from a number of sources. In a bid to improve profitability and efficiency, retailers are seeking ways to reduce costs, improve efficiency and enhance customer service through efficiency supply chain management. However, to manage the supply chain most effectively, retailers must understand exactly what the supply chain encompasses, its key concepts, and common issues and challenges they may face as they implement a workable strategy.
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