Every retailer knows how important their Store Management team is. They are the local entrepreneur and head coach managing your individual outlet and profit centre. They are locally responsible for staff welfare, staff development and staff motivation alongside ensuring customer service, maximising sales, implementing store promotions, merchandising schemes and finally doing their day job.
At RMS we describe the store environment as having ‘the elastic walls’, where every Head Office department has an urgent demand, every trading activity is more important than another, every department wants their feedback and the board needs to know right now. So for the Store Management team – do they? can they? should they? and sometimes why should they? Head Office does not always understand, or have the tools to make the right choices – we either serve the customers or we do what you ask – which means more?
For any retailer it is imperative to understand the impact to store trading, and the Store Management team. Sometimes decisions just have to be made, even if that this may impact sales performance. Sometimes promotions have to happen to meet competitor demands, supplier demands, or to be a loss leader to increase footfall and basket transactions. KNOWING & UNDERSTANDING the impact is the difference.
Imagine a Retail World in which…
The Store has:
- Clear visibility of up and coming events.
- Knowledge of what to do, be prepared and is outstanding.
- A single application for my information, knowledge, feedback, task activities, promotional plans, voice and messaging activities.
- Knowledge that someone in head office is acting as a gatekeeper to keep my information relevant, based on my brand, my store attributes and correct retail speak, in context of who I am, where I work.
- Having simple tool sets and support to build resource plans and schedules, I am not being dictated to, I am being helped.
- Clear visibility of my performance as a store and my performance as an individual.
- Knowledge that I can take accountability because I have a clear view of what my accountability means.
The Business and Head Office has:
- Clear visibility of activity and trading plans and their potential impact of store resourcing an ultimate sales opportunity.
- Clear visibility of planned labour costs, labour impact.
- Knowledge that the tasks, feedback, knowledge, content, KPIs, business applications are delivered to the right person, right store at the right time.
- Use of outlet attributes to deliver targeted instruction and information, the right merchandising guides to the store that represents that product.
- Proof of compliance, from simple confirmation, pictorial evidence to store visit compliance.
- Knowledge that the stores are seeing the same information as your public, from social media, advertising campaigns through to web offers.
- Knowledge that the stores have a simple single application to provide them with everything they need outside of taking cash in store, from any device, anytime and anywhere.
- Knowledge that as a retailer you have invested the time to communicate and support effectively, enhancing your employee experience, empowering them and making them understand the brand, the business ethics and the future opportunities for them as individuals.
These examples are not a futuristic world, it exists today.
At Retail Manager Solutions (RMS) we have a wealth of customer experiences, implementations and real retail knowledge, hence our ability to deliver what is right for retail, today and in the future.
At RMS we have the suite of solutions to deliver all of these dreams, as a retailer you can start with the specific functions that you need to deliver immediate benefit and business visibility, the additional good news is that you can be part of a journey to that total retail business solution.
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