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Vol 32 - No 05 - July/August 2006 Editorial : Editor’s Letter Retail is hot. However, nearly every software enterprise vendor and new-entrant ERP player is currently struggling with the Retail market, despite its enormous potential. Why is Retail such a hard place to make money? For starters, many retailers are yet to fully embrace newer client/server/internet technology. Secondly, Information Technology (IT) spending as a percent of revenue, is generally lower in Retail than it is in manufacturing. Finally, retailers generally spend less on packaged applications; favouring customised systems that they believe better fit their unique needs, providing more competitive advantage. Retailers need an integrated planning suite to help them synchronise financial, category, item, and assortment plans, as well as to help them ensure that top-down chain-level merchandise plans tie-in with store-level space plans. Traditionally, retailers put a different organisation to work on store-level planning than on chain-level merchandise planning. Field organisations do store budgeting, planning, and management while a centralised merchandising group works on chain-level item and assortment plans, which are eventually allocated to individual stores. Also, little checking often goes on to see whether rolled up store-level generated plans are synchronised with chain-level plans. More and more, manufacturing suppliers are partnering with retailers to help them meet consumer demand at the Point-of-Sale (POS). In the Apparel business, for example, manufacturers are helping their Retail customers manage inventories at Distribution Centres (DCs) and stores, using Quick Response (QR) initiatives. Similarly, in Grocery and other Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) markets, manufacturers are more frequently helping retailers manage inventories through category management, Continuous Replenishment Process (CRP), and Vendor-Managed Inventory (VMI) programs. Read this issue of Control to get a better understanding of supply chain management in the Retail Industry. Related Topics:
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