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5 Important Inventory Analytics Tactics for Retailers

January 3rd, 2012 by Devender Aerrabolu

The retail industry has always been competitive with very slim profit margins. Retailers can increase their sales, their profits, their relationships with their customers, and their competitiveness by effectively and efficiently managing their inventory. Historical sales data is just as important as accurate sales forecasts in spotting trends and making critical business decisions. Balancing inventory to optimize and maximize ROI entails understanding the marketplace, effectively reducing warehouse costs and customer returns, and improving sales.

Existing applications for reporting and analyzing data are inflexible and inefficient. Many retailers are moving to cloud-based SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) applications for business intelligence analysis and evaluation of business metrics. SaaS and cloud-based solutions can be implemented across all departments, including purchasing, distribution, and point-of-sale, and can be accessed from any location, computer, or mobile device. Cloud-based business intelligence technology has the capability to assist in the management of inventory more rapidly, more efficiently, and more effectively; thereby boosting profits, enhancing the competitive position, and improving customer relationships.

Inventory management is a key component to the success of retailers and several capabilities need to be available to understand the natural fluctuations of inventory and customer buying patterns.

1)Cross-functional data visibility for orders, shipping, receiving, distribution, customer returns, and marketing and advertising promotions.
2)Clear and real-time views of sales trends to maximize and optimize the product mix, including SKUs, categories, and store-by-store or region-by-region sales data.
3)A combination of metrics reports including forecasts sales, invoice aging, point-of-sale data for each reporting period—weekly, monthly, or quarterly.
4)Management capability of warehouse storage needs and inventory supply needs based on past and future sales data.
5)Strategic just-in-time inventory management that also does not negatively impact the supply chain or revenues.

SaaS-based inventory management systems does not require in-house IT resources for installation or maintenance of the applications, and allow for rapid deployment of applications. Many retailers are moving to on-demand business intelligence for their inventory management needs in order to realize cost savings, increase the speed and flexibility of data retrieval and analysis, and reduce dependent on location-based IT departments.

Posted in Applications, Business Processes, Ecommerce, Engineering Change Management, Hosting, Internet Retail, Physical Inventory, SaaS, Smart Warehouse, SMB, Systems Integration | No Comments »

How CMOs can Deliver Measurable Results

October 18th, 2011 by Devender Aerrabolu

The primary jobs of an enterprise business-to-business marketing officer are to develop strong brands, to build creative marketing campaigns, and to publish compelling content. But CMOs are also accountable to management to deliver value and measurable results on often intangible variables. One tool used by CMOs is called the integrated demand generation platform, which is a record system used for the planning, measuring, and implementation of multi-channel marketing campaigns. This marketing solution monitors and reacts to the buying signals of customers and clients, as well as to the marketing messages and website visits—signals that drive the sales cycle.

There are at least four overreaching questions that are faced by B2B marketers:

1)How to effectively reach the right prospects?
2)How to generate and manage qualified leads for the sales department?
3)How to measure the impact and value of marketing campaigns?
4)How to automate the marketing process?

The integrated demand generation platform is the tool used by marketers to produce qualified leads for the sales force in the field. It includes:

•A central depository for all information about prospects and customers, including the behaviors, activities, and interests in aggregate form.
•Effective tools for prospect and customer lists that can be refined to execute online and offline marketing channels.
•Comprehensive measuring tools for campaigns such as reports and analytics.
•Integration with other systems including sales force automation and customer relationship management.

With integrated demand generation platforms, marketing departments can optimize marketing ROI, effective target prospects, utilize lead scoring algorithms, nurture leads to cultivate more relevant buyer behavior, measure and report marketing results, increase sales revenue and decrease the sales cycle, automate the marketing and sales processes, and most importantly, align the marketing goals with the projected sales opportunities.

Posted in Business Processes, Ecommerce, Internet Retail, Systems Integration | No Comments »

Embracing Digital Resources in your Enterprise

October 4th, 2011 by Devender Aerrabolu

In order for the enterprise to successfully incorporate digital channels into the overall business strategy, the marketing department must work with the IT department to bring and keep digital channels to the highest levels possible. If the planning and implementation of a digital strategy is not structured properly, then both the marketing department and the IT department can run into potential problems such as: inconsistent branding, wasted resources, and limited impact on the business goals and objectives.

Many companies today, especially those who sell directly to the end customer, have Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, and email-marketing campaigns. Retail enterprises also allocate a major portion of their marketing to digital channels and design and maintain e-commerce sites. However, often the efforts of the disparate departments of an enterprise yield disparate results that add no value to the customer experience.

When striving to keep branding consistent, the digital marketing initiatives complement the overall brand and “fill in the gaps” in the customer life cycle. Digital marketing can also actually reinvent the customer relationship by adding value to direct consumer connection to the brand.

It falls upon the chief marketing officer (CMO) of the enterprise to embrace and manage the key components of the digital strategy and ensure that all digital efforts align with the business goals and objectives. Several initiatives can be adopted:

•Digital marketing can be aligned around specific consumer groups instead of just audience demographics.
•The digital marketing campaigns can be synchronized around the life cycle of the consumer.
•The CMO can utilize measurable business intelligence analytics supplied by the chief information officer (CIO) to optimize direct consumer responses to the marketing efforts.

The CMO who designs and implements a successful enterprise-wide digital marketing strategy considers how digital will fit into each stage of the consumer life cycle, integrates the customer relationship into the branding operation, and transforms the customer experience.

Posted in Applications, Business Processes, Ecommerce, Internet Retail, Systems Integration, Web Development | No Comments »

Trends in Internet Retailing

June 21st, 2010 by Nitin Bidi

The period 2008/2009 has been characterized as “The Great Recession”, referring to the global economic crisis that began in December 2007 increased throughout 2008. Though there remain serious economic challenges in Europe (Greece, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Hungary) there are hopeful signs of improvement in the retail sector in the United States. Online merchants, in particular, seem to be well on their way to recovery here in mid-2010.

Tully & Holland is a United States investment bank that advises on mergers and acquisitions (M & A) and private placements. The firm specializes in consumer product manufacturers and distributors, multi-channel marketers, and retailers. The managing director of Tully & Holland, Stuart Rose, recently released a comprehensive report updating the Internet Retail industry overall and reporting on trends in the M&A internet retail market.

Despite the very difficult challenges of 2009, especially and including losses and restructuring for small and medium-sized businesses, the fourth quarter of 2009 showed strong signs of growth in the fastest growing sectors of the retail industry. Conversely, the M&A sector continued to struggle, although Tully & Holland predict slow but steady growth in this area over the next five years.

Tully and Holland studied the retail marketplace for the years of 2001 through 2008 before summarizing 2009 and making forecasts for 2010 and beyond. One benchmark used in the 2009 summary document was Compound Annual Growth Rate or CAGR. Although the CAGR of Internet sales grew 18.6% from $34.5B to $150B between 2001 and 2009, the actual annual growth rate declined to a near-negative rate in 2008. Other findings for total retail sales and e-commerce include

E-commerce grew as a percentage of total retail sales from 1.1% in 2001 to 3.7% in 2009.
Online retailers enjoyed a very strong Q4 in 2009 over Q408 with YOY (Year-Over-Year) sales increasing 14.6%. That increase represented 4.3% of total retail sales.
Publicly-traded internet retail companies experienced large increases in their stock prices, increasing 130% from February of 2009; contrasting with the S&P 500 Retailing Index which increased about 70% in the same time period.

Merger and acquisitions for Internet retail did not fare as well in 2009, reporting an overall decline of 37% in deals from a total of 57 deals in 2008 to only 36 deals in 2009. The decreased availability of credit brought on by the financial sector crisis, as well as a weak overall U.S. economy are thought to be the major causes for the drop in M&A activity. There were five major transactions which comprised the majority of deals: Retail Convergence, Zappos, NextRx, Circuit City, and Ticketmaster.

The message from Tully & Holland for SMB Internet retailers is that along with growth will come increased competition and reduced prices and margins. To avoid becoming a target for acquisition, SMBs should concentrate on increasing their brand recognition, strengthening their supply chains, and upgrading their financial performance.

Posted in Ecommerce, Internet Retail | 1 Comment »