One of the most important challenges for a retailer is inventory management. If I find my stockrooms (if I have any) overflowing I'm probably spending more money than I need to be spending.
If my stockrooms are looking empty I'm no doubt losing sales. This one ought to be very obvious - simply look at my shelves or tables or displays on the selling floor.
How many of you are dummying up your displays? Facing them out? How long have you been doing that?
Who is the most important person in inventory control?
No... not him;
Those associates on the front line, the people working on the selling floor. Management has an urgent need to train associates about inventory control and those who don't do it are going to face difficult challenges down the road.
Upstairs, management works with the client software* and must be trained correctly on how to implement it.
Sometimes we see this "working" in an opposite manner. Associates on the floor are informed of nothing regarding inventory control except how to take markdowns and re-ticket merchandise. Managers behind doors are poorly trained on Content Management solutions.
Short term, the store's customer pays the price. Long term the store will eventually pay the ultimate price unless things change.
[*There are around 1,000 different POS systems to choose from]
I think stores should invest more in inventory control software and put it in the hands of more associates on the front line instead of just management. An ideal software would be one that keeps track of what is ordered, what has sold, and an estimate of what needs to be ordered. I don't think JITM software is the answer because computers do some very strange things. Imagine where else all the savings in inventory management can go to...more money for customer service, better marketing efforts, investment in category management, etc.
Posted by: Jermaine | October 16, 2007 1:00 AM | Permalink to Comment