By Praveen Kanyadi, SpotCues
Retail
operations are the backbone of every store, regardless of whether it’s a small
business or a large big box retailer. These systems include everything from
managing inventory and staff to maintenance and customer data — any activity
that keeps the shop running smoothly.
While
consumer-facing advances are essential, many retailers have yet to make
critical investments in back-end operations. Continuing inefficiencies on the
shop floor are causing some store chains to fall behind the competition,
largely due to an inferior guest experience and dated brand image.
Advertisement
Brick-and-mortar
retailers must optimize operations to sustain themselves, ensuring the seamless
functioning of all customer-facing and back-end activities. By running all
systems like clockwork, both stores and customers benefit. If a store is
well-stocked, clean, neatly arranged and staffed with highly trained personnel,
shoppers grow to trust and prefer its brand. Add personalized offers and
easy-to-use technology, and the footfalls will only increase.
However,
the complexity of retail operations makes implementation a challenge. Stores must
contend with numerous hurdles, including:
Paper-driven
processes
The daily
operations of most stores still rely heavily on paper. This manual process is
cumbersome and time-consuming for store associates but, most importantly, makes
tracking noncompliance in real time impossible. It also limits any historical
insights and data-driven decision making.
Deskless
communication
Associates
on the floor have a deskless job. Communication is a vital aspect of operations
and traditional channels aren’t available to these workers. Most don’t even
have a corporate email address.
Training
among attrition
Retail has
among the highest attrition rates across industries. The constant churn makes
training a huge undertaking. The struggle to provide meaningful employee
engagement contributes to the issue as well.
Project
management
Day-to-day
operations involve several ad-hoc and repeating activities. Managers find it
difficult to track and stay on top of these tasks, and there’s minimal
visibility for corporate leaders into daily tasks.
Overall,
the most pressing deficiencies caused by a lack of back-end technology are
restricted visibility into noncompliance and inefficiencies in operations — not
to mention the inability to respond in a time-sensitive manner.
The ideal
retail operations ‘recipe’ can help retailers optimize their shop floor with
three steps: automate operations, onboard the right tools and make data-driven
decisions.
1. Automate
operations on mobile
Retailers
need to convert manual process such as store opening, closing and audit lists
into digital checklists. This enables store associates to conveniently complete
the to-dos from their phones and save significant time compared to entering
this information manually.
A
mobile-based task management solution makes it easy for operation leads to
create ad-hoc tasks or schedule recurring activities and assign them to relevant
staff. The staff members can then easily update the status of the project on the
go from a mobile device. All stakeholders receive real-time notifications on
progress.
In terms of
training, mobile-based learning platforms can significantly reduce the onboarding
time for new employees and expand skills through easy, intuitive access. These
programs come with gamification features to boost participation and increase
engagement. They also provide live tracking as staff members make their way through
the material.
2. Onboard
the right tools and micro-app technology
It’s hard
to find a vendor that provides all the automation capabilities within a single
platform out-of-the-box. Often, retailers end up with a very fragmented
approach and a proliferation of apps that employees need to install. Training
becomes more challenging, as users need to adapt to different interface styles,
and initiatives start to flounder. The best platforms provide both core
capabilities and the extendibility to integrate with other leading
digital products.
Enterprises
sometimes need a suite of apps tailored to meet the needs of a variety of
functions. Essentially, these are a collection of micro-apps. As the name
suggests, micro applications are lightweight apps built for a specific purpose.
They contain only truly necessary features, are relatively inexpensive and are
easy to learn to use.
Walmart
recently announced the rollout of a suite of micro-apps for its employees to
facilitate day-to-day tasks. These apps will enable store associates to look up
inventory in real time or instantly find out which products have arrived in
store (which, in the past, had to be entered manually).
The
micro-apps are also designed to streamline store operations through insights.
For example, associates can instantly see when a product went out of stock and
identify the root cause, such as staffing issues or shelf capacity.
3. Make data-driven
decisions
Without a
robust digital architecture, retailers cannot benefit from the vast amounts of
customer, employee and product data available to them. This type of information
underpins the success of many tech-forward companies, like Netflix and Google,
and the same idea works in a retail context.
For
example, converting audit lists to digital checklists enables operation
managers to track noncompliance in real time and take necessary action. Also,
the availability of historical information allows for data-driven decisions and
helps measure individual store performance.
Retailers
must automate operations and develop real-time communication capabilities to
drive operational efficiencies, stay compliant and optimize performance through
data. A mobile-based store experience — both for customers and employees — enables
these aspirations. As long as leadership teams select the right platforms for
their stores, the investment will surely pay off in the form of increased
consumer loyalty and profits.
Praveen Kanyadi is Co-Founder and VP Products at SpotCues, a micro-app platform that helps
organizations rapidly mobilize their workforce. Kanyadi is an experienced
product leader who has successfully led product teams, hired and mentored
product managers in Fortune 500 companies and startups. In his previous role at
Yahoo, he built social experiences that reached over 750 million end users. In
the past five years, Kanyadi has extensively worked in developing mobile-based
solutions in the B2B and B2C space and these solutions have been deployed at
large enterprises across the globe.
