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Understanding Retail Operations
What comes to your mind when you hear about retail? This term is related to commercial activities that involve selling goods and services directly to final consumers in a shop/supermarket. However, those activities can’t be separated from the operational needs that support the business.
Retail operations are a series of activities used to describe everything needed to support buying and selling activities in stores, in order to achieve retail operational excellence. Retail operational excellence means a business has achieved consistent targets in managing, optimizing, and integrating various tasks performed in a store.
3 Important Elements in Retail Operations
There are 3 elements that must be fulfilled to achieve retail operational excellence:
Merchandising
Merchandising is a supervisory activity starting from receiving products from distributors to reaching the end customers. This activity is usually done together with the sales team to plan and monitor inventory. The main focus is optimizing inventory, matching the best order quantity, adjusting store visualization to attract customers’ attention, and predicting the best-selling stock to reduce the possibility of running out/overstocking.
Workforce
Retailers need staff to carry out various tasks from handling customers, processing transactions, goods delivery, managing stock, and so on. Workforce is one of the determining factors of the retail business, therefore it needs to be managed optimally.
It’s not easy to monitor staff’s work manually, so most companies use technology-based workforce systems. Have you optimized the workforce capabilities? Advotics provides a Workforce Management System to ensure transparent and automated performance management for the workforce.
Warehouse
A warehouse is an important element in the retail business since all stock items will be placed for a while before being sold to final consumers. Warehouses for retail can be positioned in-store locations or centralized for several branches (hubs).
Warehouse management is a complicated process because consumer demand often fluctuates unexpectedly. The order of goods released must be arranged, so the stock doesn’t stay too long in the warehouse.
Achieve the best warehouse operational performance with Advotics Warehouse Management System. Increase the accuracy of moving goods, maximize warehouse capacity, and record the stock-taking process in an integrated manner and easier.
Interested in maximizing the performance of your retail business? Book a demo now!
