12/15/2022
What Makes a Retailer a Household Name?
For retailers, becoming a household name doesn’t happen overnight. Retail companies spend time, money, and resources honing their growth strategies to align with their mission and the latest consumer trends, including increased omnichannel customer experiences and more frequent autonomous fulfillment.
Consumers have so many retailers available to choose from. So, how can you stand out in such a competitive market? Like any company looking to achieve its business goals, a good place to start is with strategic planning to identify a mission, a vision, and a path forward. Those movements often include new systems implementation with the technology to support these business goals. And you can’t forget about the employees, the heart of a company, that may experience changes in their day-to-day as the company shifts and require change management to adopt new business processes and systems.
While the path to becoming a retail industry leader is long and includes lots of strategic planning, supporting technology, and change management, the definition of success may vary from retailer to retailer. By focusing on your unique offering, the definition of success, and your consumer, you can create a name customers will share with others. What do you want consumers to think of you as a retailer and how does that tie into what they want as consumers? I have a feeling this is what Amazon, Target, and H-E-B have asked themselves many times as they have been able to become household names by standing out in an ever-changing industry.
Did Alexa Create Autonomous Fulfillment?
When you hear the word Amazon, “Alexa” may be the next word that comes to your mind. “Instant gratification” may be another phrase that you associate with the brand, especially when considering the one-click buying process. Whether it’s Alexa answering a question or Amazon’s mobile app managing our monthly subscription order, everything with the brand feels fast and easy. This is autonomous fulfillment and delivery of both knowledge and product from Amazon. But how did Amazon achieve this?
Starting over a decade ago, Amazon started to develop strategies to predict customers’ product needs before they asked for them. This started with an overhaul of their supply chain process to support quick delivery services and automate as many steps in the process as possible. Fast forward to today and consumers can now create product subscriptions one time at their preferred delivery frequency and Amazon delivers in accurate time windows without us having to lift a finger again.
A decade of process improvement is no small feat but starting with an initial project to upgrade your supply chain processes does not have to take that long. Building a strong strategic supply chain plan is a solid place to start. Beginning a new vendor selection process for robust supply chain software is a smart investment to prepare for long-term goals.