Off the Shelf: The Retail & CPG Blog

Guest Post by Nakul Srinivas, Assistant Marketing Manager, Infosys

A growth of advertising growth on mobile telephones during the first six months of this year shows that mobile advertising is a force to be reckoned with.With companies more eager to jump on the mobile advertising bandwagon, they seem to be spending lesser time on setting clear outcomes and measurement strategies for the returns that will accrue from this.

Continue reading "Maximizing bang for your buck through Mobile Marketing" »

Posted by Guest Blogger at 11:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Continue reading "Tomorrow's Data Driven Enterprise" »

Posted by Guest Blogger at 9:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Continue reading "Social Applications for the Enterprise" »

Posted by Guest Blogger at 6:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

 "Google Indoor Maps" has opened a whole new opportunity to retailers whereby they can enable their customers in getting easy and quick access to the products that they're looking for. In brief, "Google Indoor Maps" allows a person walking inside a store to navigate his travel within this indoor location just like what she(/he) would have done while driving a car using a GPS

Integrating these maps with Retailer's own mobile application (app) and tagging a store's aisles by "Product Categories" on these Google Indoor Maps for a large format store, going down to category of products available by Brands may be just the beginning of the thought as to how Retailers allow their patrons to directly reach out for the product that they are looking for rather than wandering through store departments or searching for a store associate which for some shoppers may be time consuming or even frustrating.

One of the best supporting feature on Google floor maps, is the ability to guide the user by individual floor's plans, whereby a large multi-level retail stores can also be covered easily and therefore we feel that some of the immediate exploits can be in the large scale Store or say Super Store

Let us try to understand how one such Retailer app may make the life a Retailer's clientele much simpler and the shopping experience much better. Assume the scenario that our loyal Customer "Louise" is entering such a Large Super Store for her weekly purchases which runs across several departments of the store like fresh produce, dry grocery, apparel, cleaning supplies, bath-ware, electronics, sports goods and the list goes on. Soon after she has parked at the store, Louise logs-in to the Retailer's own native Mobile app on her smart phone. The Retailer's app upon invocation on her smart phone, detects her geographical location and the store that she is visiting today via Location Based Services (LBS) wherein this specific store's latest tagged maps can be pulled and displayed on Louise's phone's screen

To make the whole shopping trip faster, Louise has keyed in the shopping-list beforehand in the app and a route map is prepared for her upon her check-in into the store via this app. This route map is based on the latest movement of shelves/racks in the store.  Such a guided walk cuts down the Louise's walk through the aisles a short, easy and a confortable one

Louise was looking for a shirt for her son, but the size small does not appear on the shelf today... does the store have it? No problem... the check would be a quick one by Louise quickly getting to know this via her mobile app. Moreover, if it is not available in store right now, the app prompts her with an easy and quick site to store order which she can pick up during her trip next week 

Another use for this app+google maps eco-system can be to integrate with the floor maps and publish current vacancies/next available time slots/expected wait times in Large Store's sub stores like ophthalmologist shops, saloons etc.

This Large Super Store's sub stores are very frequently publishing a status of a vacant customer spots/seat available or unavailability of the same on the floor map which when viewed by Louise, will give her an idea whether she needs to do the shopping first or go to the sub store for a quick visit to the hair salon

While these are just some of the initial thoughts, when pursued actively this specific technology can be utilized in umpteen ways to boost the store sales and to guarantee customer satisfaction. Overall, sky is the limit when one starts documenting the concept of such a solution/product. Customer purchase/return history and loyalty points can be utilized to highlight offers/deals when customer is approaching a specific aisle or when she has been looking for a specific product for some time

This article has been contributed by Ashutosh Kaushal - Senior Consultant (Sterling Commerce - Infosys Ltd). You can reach Ashutosh at Ashutosh_Kaushal@infosys.com.

Posted by Sanjeev Kulkarni at 10:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In Retail, Item is the single most strategic asset whose influence is pervasive across the entire enterprise. And yet, retailers often tend to think about item data in silos. For e.g. - Merchandising team focuses on improving the weight and dimension quality of the product, Finance team is interested in better accuracy for price and cost information while Store operations are most worried about accurate barcode and other labeling issues. Accordingly the initiatives that get most traction are the ones focused on solving the issues faced by individual business units rather than the entire organization.

What often falls through the cracks is the perspective that these are not really different problems but 'one common problem' which is tied to item data quality and visibility. The idea that item data quality impacts all core business functions is not that new but often IT team finds it difficult to articulate the spread of item data related issues and the cost impact that it has on the organization.

Here, a value chain perspective can help provide a framework to retail IT organization to clearly understand and explain all the issues related to item data while also allowing them to create a business case to drive the investment.

Value Chain of Data

So what is the value chain view of item data? To understand it, we need to think about item data along the similar lines as product. Just like physical products, item data is envisioned, created, maintained and consumed by various participants in a value chain which consists of several players across various business units like Supplier, Buyer, Planner, Replenishment Manager, DC Coordinator, Store Manager etc. There is also a time dimension to this perspective, where value is being added to item data at each step as it moves through the chain starting with vendor negotiation all the way through in store sales followed by discontinuation.

When one looks at flow of item data through this lens, it is easy to draw parallels with the supply chain of products. Such a perspective helps identify the problems and opportunities at each node in the chain which can be linked to the larger picture. It also helps identify and associate the losses due to issues at a particular node which can be tied back to overall cost of data issues for the enterprise. In a nutshell, it acts like a dashboard to tell the story about the Impact of bad data on the entire enterprise.

In our experience, we have found it to be a very powerful and effective way to communicate the overall impact of poor item data quality and visibility to business stakeholders. It helps set the right context with the executives and allow them to ask the right questions to make appropriate decisions. We believe that such a perspective can help IT team better articulate the need for item data quality and visibility while engaging business stakeholders meaningfully to make the right decisions.

We would like to know what you think about this approach and better still if you have tried it in your organization, please share your experience. Did it work or not?

This article has been authored by Shachin Prabhat - Principal Consultant (Infosys Consulting). Reach Shachin at Shachin_prabhat01@infosys.com

Posted by Sanjeev Kulkarni at 10:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Most retailers traditionally leverage sales data from POS terminals to analyze buying behavior. In some cases, loyalty card data is also used to determine appropriate assortment decisions. These data sources and their corresponding analysis have proven reasonably helpful, though they don't convey the whole picture. With the recent explosion in social and consumer related data on the web, there is a wealth of information that Retailers should be exploiting and incorporating into their merchandising decisions, primarily around assortment and space.

Social/Consumer genome related data provides rich insights into needs, wants and buying behavior of individuals. This data when combined with demographic and geographic data can provide a good map of consumer wants and needs for a given market for a set of product categories.

A major input into merchandising decisions / assortment plans is to determine consumer buying behavior to identify what products sell and what potential products could sell to increase sales. Based on this analysis, assortment decisions of inclusion/exclusion or allotment of space are provided. The means to identify this buying behavior was typically the use of POS data or data from Nielsen/IRI that provided good basis for WHAT was being purchased. When married with Demographic data, there was a good proxy for WHY the products were being purchased. Even when rigorous correlation and clustering analysis is carried out, the determination of buying behavior and the reasons for the same were proxies at best.

Now with the availability of consumer genome or social genome information, the analysis of WHY purchases are being made and what is being purchased with identification of latent and express needs becomes even more accurate as there is clear expression of wants and needs. This will significantly enhance the quality of assortment and merchandising decisions as the degree of error/approximation is reduced.

There are however some pitfalls to the use of this data. We cannot solely rely on this data as web usage and consumer/social genome information may not fully represent buying needs and wants for the entire market population. This data usage has to be married to traditional sales analysis to augment the decision making process.

There are no tools / application products in the market place that provide truly integrated capabilities. The holy grail for optimized merchandising would be to integrate social/consumer genome data effectively into the traditional clustering analysis and thereby into the assortment planning process. This might be a challenge for some of the retailers who struggle with traditional approaches. Asking them to adopt more advanced analytical approaches to incorporate social/consumer genome data would be a challenge.

The key would be to devise suitable technology/process platform augmented with robust analytics shared services that can leverage necessary data to enable optimized merchandising decisions.

This article has been contributed by Amitabh Mudaliar (Group Engagement Manager - RCL Infosys). You can reach Amitabh at Amitabh_M@infosys.com.

Posted by Sanjeev Kulkarni at 10:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Most retailers spend a lot of time defining space plans - both floor plans as well as specific plan-o-grams. These plans are created after a lot of data analysis and are distributed to the stores for execution with expectations of positive impact on sales and margins. A big issue with the execution of these plans is the realization of these plans at the stores. Compliance of execution to these plans typically starts deteriorating almost as soon as the plan-o-grams are executed at the stores. Non-compliance can occur as plans created corporately do not always take into consideration local constraints (Jump shelves, mis-aligned shelving, incorrect fixture information, in accurate floor plan information etc.). Also, non-compliance can occur due to consumer activity at the stores or during re-stocking of shelves. The problem for retailers has always been to determine this degree of compliance to accurately track effectiveness of plans for future correction and analysis.

The task of monitoring compliance is huge given the size and scale of what is to be tracked and measured. Measuring/tracking the position on products across shelves for various product categories will require a lot of investment in man-power, most of which becomes redundant as soon as it is carried out. Some Retailers do rely on such physical compliance measures to sample a portion of the stores/plans to check for compliance. However this is not a very effective means of tracking and monitoring compliance. This is the "plan-o-gram compliance" problem that all retailers face. Getting this solved can provide a very accurate basis for analysis around space planning.

Recent methods that are being tried out leverage image recognition software that can analyze the images on a picture and decompose the same into individual items. So imagine taking a picture/snapshot of a shelf at a store. This image may be quickly taken by a store associate and automatically uploaded into a central database. While uploading details of the plan number and the product category need to be provided. Once uploaded, the software can analyze the picture for the particular category and compare the individual products to the plan-o-gram to create a "real-o-gram". The software will need to resolve individual images into products based on pre-defined images and details for each product. The real-o-gram is then compared to the plan-o-gram to determine spatial position, facings etc. The image comparison could also throw out issues of stock outs and arrangement that corporate planners may not be aware of. This comparison can very quickly generate an audit of compliance and send corrective actions (within tolerance) to store associates to fix.

This activity of taking pictures will require minimal training and is very quick and cost effective. Entire stores and chains may be quickly audited using this method. There is yet to be wide spread adoption of this method, but this can be a great approach to solving the compliance issue. If the compliance variance is known and corrective action is taken, the accuracy of space plans and the measurement of their effectiveness would be significantly enhanced. This could impact the way floor plans are created and also the way in which plan-o-grams are created.

This article has been contributed by Amitabh Mudaliar (Group Engagement Manager - RCL Infosys). You can reach Amitabh at Amitabh_M@infosys.com.

Posted by Sanjeev Kulkarni at 10:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

 The Order to Cash process is at the heart of every business and I have often been tasked with asking clients and prospects to consider moving their Order to Cash processes into a Shared services delivery model with a third party service provider.  Over the years this attempt of mine has evinced myriad expressions from clients ranging from the "Have you lost it?" look to the "You just showed me business process nirvana" look. The industry where I experienced the most contrasting reactions was the CPG industry and I wanted to share some interesting learning from the experience of working with a few clients in walking the talk and sharing in their Order to Cash transformation journey over the years.

To provide some context, the concept of Business process outsourcing in the CPG industry is not a new one. This industry was one of the earliest adopters of outsourcing transactional and back office business processes such as Accounts Payables, Accounts Receivables, Payroll processing and Procurement. The primary driver for outsourcing across all these processes was labor cost arbitrage followed by process efficiencies from consolidation; harmonization and continuous improvement. These drivers have become the cornerstone of all business process outsourcing relationships and have for long settled into becoming the marketing tagline for the BPO industry.

With this legacy of perceived value from BPO relationships, when one has to go down the same journey with Order to Cash processes, the value equation does not necessary stack up. The most obvious reason for this skew in the case of O2C processes is Risk. To cite an instance provided by one of my clients - The entire annual cost savings delivered by a BPO relationship can potentially be eroded by one order from a large retailer being inadvertently dropped or shipped to the wrong address due to the contractual penalties involved. And one defect out of a million is acceptable even by "Six Sigma" standards!

So two questions come up, the "Why" and the "How"? The "Why" is easy. Given that the Order to Cash process impacts not just the G&A metric but also the Cost of Goods Sold, Working capital efficiency, Days Sales of Inventory and Gross Revenue metrics, a successful shared services strategy undertaken by engaging the right partner could catalyze business transformation impacting the highest levels of the organization.

The tough question however is the "How"? I often relate that to converting an "Art" into a "Science". The "Art" here refers to the finesse and proficiency that Customer service representatives have honed on their jobs for a number of years. The "Science" here refers to replicating that same level of service or sometimes even improving it but with a completely new team that's located thousands of miles away in a global delivery model.  Sounds like mission impossible right? Not really. It's been done before and involves the following best practices:

·         Create the right operating model: The tried and tested Front Office-Back Office model is a great starting point. It allows for a risk mitigated approach to the end state sourcing mix given the need to balance risk and value in a customer centric setup for the CPG industry.

·         Create the right performance measurement methodology: The days of adopting operational metrics such as cycle time, average handling time, Abandonment rate, First Contact Resolution etc to govern outsourcing relationships are a thing of the past. These metrics are now considered Business As Usual (BAU). Consider including business metrics and supply chain performance metrics such as cost per order/invoice, Case Fill Rates (CFRs), On Time Delivery (OTD), Truckload capacity utilization, Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) into the performance measurement framework

·         Create a segmented service framework: Most CPG businesses operate in the 80:20 model where 20% of customers account for 80% of revenues. Given this mix, a one size fits all shared services model will fail to deliver differentiated service experience to top tier customers. Consider a three tier service framework involving Transactional shared services, Business support services and Enterprise support services layers

·         Choose the right global delivery model: Most top tier BPO providers today have global presence with established Centers of Excellence. Adopt a hub and spoke global delivery model preferably aligned to customer tiers as well as the segmented service framework

·         Adopt a phased transition approach: A prudent transition plan is the foundation to successful Order to Cash shared services adoption. Consider creating a phased transition plan where phasing is based on customer tiers, markets, process complexity or a combination of these parameters

While there are several other design considerations, the above five are what I could call the essential ingredients of Order to Cash BPO solutions for the CPG industry. With these best practices implemented, companies can start to cash in on their Order to Cash processes through BPO shared services led transformation.

This article has been authored by Sushanth Ananth (Manager, Client Services - Retail, CPG, Logistics and Life Sciences, Infosys Ltd). You can reach Sushanth at Sushanth_ananth@infosys.com.

Posted by Sanjeev Kulkarni at 10:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Consumers and End Users today are looking at opportunities which will ensure quicker and easier access to their needs and want to pursue avenues which will help enable their requirements are met in simplest possible way. To make this happen we observe so many emerging trends and transformations starting from Internet, eCommerce, Mobility, etc... Just wanted to pen down my experience on mobility in everyday life during my recent domestic travel.

I was travelling on regular business trip and was in the queue checking in to board the flight. The boarding was happening zone by zone. First the Executive and First class passengers were being boarded, and followed by passengers from Zone-1 through Zone-4. When I was almost close to heading the gate and ready to hand in by boarding pass for check-in, the passenger ahead of me handed over his mobile and got it scanned and went through the gates for boarding the flight. Few of the passengers behind me who probably are not aware of mobile check-in were surprised and were discussing on what are they doing with a mobile phone and scanning?? 

Mobile check-in has become very common these days. Passenger need not have to go through the hassle of getting their airline confirmation information and print out a paper boarding pass and get through the check-in process. Rather the complete process is made much simple. When the booking is done on-line, passengers have the option to choose "Electronic check-in" and submit their mobile details so that eBoarding details are sent to the mobile device. Once a passenger have mobile boarding pass in their device they need not wait in the airline ticketing counter or self-checkin aisle to print out the paper boarding pass. Instead they can directly go to the TSA agents show the eBoarding pass and get through the security check area, and then directly go to the airline agent near the boarding gates, have the eBoarding pass scanned and directly walk into the flight. Life is made much simpler and easier and new opportunities are designed which will help end users save time and money.

On the face of it the mobility usage for a simple airline check-in process helps in:

1.       Reducing usage of paper (Go green) for airline confirmation and boarding pass.

2.       Saves time for passengers standing in airline counters / self check-in to get their boarding pass.

3.       Reduces manual work for airline saving labor cost.

This is one of the several other aspects where mobility is transforming the life style of a common man. Apart from airline ticketing, we have several other emerging trends in mobility like Accessing internet, Social networking, mCommerce, Use of QR codes, etc... There are new and ground breaking technology that emerges everyday to simplify the life of a common man, now it is up to each individuals to make sure they are up to speed on the changes and tap them based on specific requirements.

Also we have technologies like NFC (Near Field Communications) which has started to become common and prevalent wherein smartphones and devices having the capability can communicate between each other wireless without any physical connectivity.

Given the latest surveys and statistics we know that at least 4 out of every 5 users have mobile phones and with so many new trends and apps being introduced almost every day, it is up to the end user to leverage the benefits and advantages and make his life simpler and economical. Have fun with your Mobile devices / smartphones!

This article has been authored by Harshavardan Balachandran (Program Manager - Infosys Ltd). Reach Harsha at Harshavardan_b@infosys.com

Posted by Sanjeev Kulkarni at 10:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Despite the fact that online shopping does not provide "instant gratification" except for downloads such as books, movies, documents, software etc.; online shopping has only boomed in other areas such as apparel and grocery due to a seamless multi-channel integration by many large retailers. But the fact still remains that most shoppers browsing online would like "Instant Gratification" and hence would only browse and compare prices on the web. But, when it comes to purchasing an item they may drive down to their favorite store. This urge of the customer to immediately buy an item may be taken care of with a value added service such as "Same day delivery".

With most online retailers having just a few centralized warehouse locations, it may not be very easy to deliver an item from a warehouse in Texas to a customer in California the very same day the order is received. While large retailers like Amazon have plans to set up warehouses across different parts of US to provide such a service it may not be a feasible option for many other retailers.  While Amazon has been largely successful in providing significant value to "Prime" customers with the Next day delivery option, "Same day delivery" will be a huge leap forward; while many other competitors such as BestBuy still struggle to get their online commerce strategies in the right place. There are also opinions from experts who believe that such a move by Amazon to set up distribution centers right inside some of the largest metropolitan areas instead of far-off low cost interior locations, has the potential to kill local retail businesses. And if you want your stuff "NOW" you would order on Amazon.com.

Having said that, let us explore what are the options for other large retailers who have both physical and online stores. While many large retailers have a Multi-Channel Integration plan with a "Pick up in store" option, how many are able to implement it the right way? We have seen many customers complaining on the web, that these retailers may not carry inventory even if their website shows inventory of goods. Therefore a seamless integration of your store and online inventory is a must. Many retailers still do not take an online payment for a "Store Pick Up" order due to disconnect between their online and physical store's order management, payments and customer service systems. Also, if "Store Pick Up" can be implemented perfectly right, you would be certainly able to provide "Same day delivery". If the system can look up inventory within 5 or 10 stores nearest to the location of the shipping address, and if the order can be sourced from the optimal store, "Same day delivery" can be achieved. The in-store processes may have to be re-modeled such that, when a "Same day delivery" order is received, in-store associates pick and move the order to a "Carrier pick up" area and the preferred 3PL would pick the orders for a day and deliver them the same day. It would also be important to provide a seamless Mobile and Tablet integration for such a program. Also, the right e-mail communication for order status updates and for program marketing is also an important area for the retailer not to ignore.

While I personally feel such a delivery option can completely alter the way we shop in future, it would be great to analyze perspectives of all the readers of this blog.  

Posted by Sanjeev Kulkarni at 8:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Posted by Somnath Sinha at 2:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I have discussed about some important strategies that a retailer's social media plan should entail, in one of my blogs earlier. It is extremely essential that we also provide the right features in our social solution.  In this blog I have discussed some very interesting features that a social solution must include. This list is a result of an extensive research of various social features currently available in the market and being put to effective use by various online businesses. We had also presented these ideas through a PoV last year. 

We have all known of the facebook and twitter share/like button and this has been extensively talked about thus far. We also know about features such as the "Shop" tab on facebook, But there are some very interesting features that can make your social shopping solution savvy and fun..... 

Continue reading "Essential and Savvy features for your Social Solution" »

Posted by Sanjeev Kulkarni at 9:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We do realize that social media plays an important role in the way we conduct business today. Every retailer yearns to be a part of the social revolution. In their quest to stay ahead of the competition, is very important for every online business to strategize a social media plan. How should retailers go about planning their social media strategy?

There are a few important facts that any retailer should analyze before they jump to a strategy:
- What is it that I want to achieve, through a social media strategy?
- Do I really believe this is an unearthed goldmine?
- How should I implement a successful social media plan? How easy is it to implement different social media strategies and what is the timeline I'm looking at?
- What is my budget?

Well, as we find answers to these questions, we do realize that there are two different strategies that a retailer may plan to implement:

1. Retail layer on a social layer:
This strategy aims to build a retail layer on a social layer (For eg. Building a retail layer on facebook). Very recent examples are that of J.C.Penny embedding their complete product catalogue on facebook, and Hallmark cards embedding the "Shop" tab on their facebook page to allow customers to buy cards on Facebook.
Features such as the Facebook "like" button and "share" on twitter may also be considered part of this strategy. Another very important feature would be open id or facebook/twitter login.

Amazon implemented facebook connect in order to provide product suggestions based on likes and favorites pulled from your social graph. By connecting your account, you allow Amazon to scrape the interests and favorites of your friends. You can then view suggested gift ideas based on this data. Amazon also will populate lists of items that are popular among all of your friends, as well as suggestions based on your own interests.

What can I achieve?
In simple words -
- Connectivity to customers and a more informed and a knowledgeable customer.
- Easy Viral marketing on social media.
- Personalized recommendations using interests/likes/dislikes etc of customers based on their social graph.

What about the time and budget?
Easy to achieve. The easiest parts being "Facebook like" and "Share" buttons. The overall strategy is easy to implement and requires a few months of efforts. An agile implementation model helps in interim analysis of the success of various features you implement.

2. Social layer on a retail layer:
This is a comparatively difficult and a time consuming strategy to implement. It aims at building a social network within your retail network. Mysears.com is an example of this. Department store Sears have given their website a social shopping makeover by adding a social layer that allows you to "message" and "follow" other users, see their profiles and their onsite social activity, like products (as well as dislike, want and own them), and join groups.

What can I achieve?
- Connectivity to customers and a more informed and a knowledgeable customer.
- Easy Viral marketing within the retail network.
- Personalized recommendations using interests/likes/dislikes etc of customers based on their social graph within the retail network.
- Though most of the results are same as the first strategy, the following points are worth taking a look at.

What about the time and budget?
Time required to implement this strategy is greater than leveraging an already existing social network like facebook or myspace or twitter to do your job. If you have a greater social media budget and want to own all the trends of your customers without letting a 3rd party to know what your customers like, what they dislike, what are their gift lists etc. then this is the strategy for you to implement.

Which strategy is the best for you?
The answer to this question depends on a multitude of factors, which have been considered above. But if I were to consult you, I would recommend you to go with the first strategy if your budget is not huge and you are ok to let facebook or whoever your social media partner may be, to own all of the shopping and activity trends of your customers. Also, this is the best strategy for you to implement as long as you feel you are only testing the waters and not actually swimming. You may take a plunge into the second strategy if you have a solid budget and have already tested waters for yourself. A detailed analysis of your business format, product portfolio, customer profiles, market demographics, customer preferences and your Social commerce budget will help portray a better picture of your future social strategy.

These are some thoughts that might help you as retailers, marketers, social media executives or as consultants to help align social media strategies of the future.

Posted by Sanjeev Kulkarni at 3:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)