User-Friendly Tools For Managing Your Business
In the Information Age data is currency and, as is the case in the financial world, how that currency is managed in the retailing business makes all the difference in the return on investment that can be expected. That, in a nutshell, is what Retail Solutions Inc. (RSI) is all about. "RSI is in the asset management business, and it just happens to be that retail inventories are the asset of focus at the moment," explains RSI president.
Against a backdrop of ongoing consolidation in the industry and facing the prospects of shifting channel demand and slower population and economic growth, drug store chains are challenged to find new ways to enhance inventory management marketplace tool. One of the best ways for them to do that is to improve their return on assets. "From an inventory investment perspective we look at internal and external performance for the purpose of making specific recommendations," RSI president says. "Sometimes that means expanding or contracting certain categories in specific markets or stores. In some cases it might even mean abandoning a category completely. However, the objective is always the same-to improve performance by maximizing return on inventory assets." Retail Solutions was formed about two and a half years ago with the objective of helping retailers interpret and convert internal and external data into actionable programs that are sensitive to market needs but at the same time enhance return on investment, as the company's web site puts it. To do that RSI promises to act as a facilitator to bridge the gap between market-level data and a retailer's strategic direction and niche opportunities. With a career that includes stints as vice president of distribution and vice president of purchasing at CVS Corp., and executive vice president of marketing and distribution at Brooks Drug, Jennings is in a unique position to deliver on RSI's promises to chain drug retailers. Jennings offers the ethnic beauty care business -- arguably one of the worst-managed categories in retailing--as an example of what RSI can do to improve retail performance. "This is a case where the external or demographic figures are not always 100% reliable, because the residential data does not necessarily translate into who is shopping in a particular store," he explains. One leading drug chain that is an RSI client operates a store in a downtown location with virtually no resident African-American population of consequence. Yet that store is one of the chain's highest-volume generators of ethnic beauty care sales. The seeming contradiction is explained by the fact that the store's shopper population is highly transient, consisting largely of consumers who work but do not live in the area. "That illustrates the fact that making fact-based decisions solely from national syndicated data is inadequate," says RSI's chief technology officer. "Products, stores and consumer shopping patterns are constantly changing. The only way to make account-specific decisions for each product or brand that help increase overall category sales is to analyze daily chainwide store-by-store point-of-sale [P-O-S] data--and that's just what we do." One of the most valuable services RSI provides to retailers is continuous replenishment, a key driver of true efficient assortment practices. "The beauty of what we do on the replenishment side is that we can dynamically and proactively manage those assortments," Jennings says. |