Collaboration among private-label partners has never been more important, and recent research suggests that in addition to improving organization, communication, safety and compliance, better collaboration among private-label stakeholders can also lead to improved production and cost efficiencies.
Companies across all industries depend more and more on analytics and insights to run their businesses profitably. But, attracting, managing and retaining talented personnel to execute on those strategies remains a challenge.
Retailers generally have a reputation for being slow to embrace the latest innovations in technology. According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the retail industry as a whole spends far less on technology than nearly all other service sectors.
Building true omnichannel merchandising capabilities requires the merging of previously siloed business functions. Footwear retailer Aerosoles has been omnichannel for about 10 years now, however, over the past 18 months the organization has decided to step up to manage the business properly.
At the beginning of 2013, Williams-Sonoma outlined four key areas of focus: strengthening its brands, laying the foundation for global expansion, investing in supply chain and investing in the technologies and infrastructure that underlay all these initiatives.
The customer expects shoe retailer DSW to be able to gather the shoes she wants, regardless of how she's shopping and regardless of where the shoe is located in the retailer's system. So it's good news that DSW reports it has made significant progress on its omnichannel initiative.
O'Reilly Automotive has been on a strong growth path for the past couple of years. Adding to the retailer's success has been its rate of growth and technology evolvement. O'Reilly has been keeping up with the pace of change by replacing its POS transaction engine, integrating promotions and incentives into the new system for a seamless customer experience and enhancing its electronic parts catalog.
Canadian Tire will deploy at least 5,000 tablet devices to its core network of 490 stores beginning in May. The rollout follows fast on the debut of a digital content hub designed to improve both in-store and online shopping experiences at Canada's largest retailer.
Even in today's data-hungry analytics environment, collecting and keeping every tiny granule of retail data - down to the level of each individual transaction and web click - might seem like overkill. But Sears Holdings has discovered that data storage costs have gotten low enough, and analytical tools have grown powerful enough, that this approach to Big Data has shortened the time needed for analytics projects by 60 percent to 70 percent, while also improving promotion conversions, lowering inventory levels and boosting sales.