Every Retailer today in the domestic US market is taking a sigh of relief that the retail commoditization era (1988 – 2008) is coming to an end. Emerging is the clear and understandable goal of an improved customer experience.

The result of commoditization – competition based on price, is that private labels gain dominance. When this occurs other factors suffer, unit sales go down, advertising to sales ratios go down, volume declines, manufacturer support diminishes, and category profits slip.

Creating the best customer experience is based on two important

efforts:
1. Develop Brand Name products that deliver higher quality and yield greater profit margins.
2. Drive down development costs and shorten cycle times using robust product development tools that increase project visibility.

With today’s fast passed and ever changing retail environment, there is no time for wasted efforts. Yet still today error and waste is an epidemic across the supply chain.

What is the cause for this chaos? Analysts have identified that product development efforts are being executed thru the efforts of globally dispersed teams. Project and Product Managers alike are required to track work-in-progress using fragmented tools.

These tools used individually can be quite effective for simple objectives but when a manager is forced to use e-mail, phones, faxes, meetings, travel, and manual effort to track massive volumes of information, things can go wrong and too often they do.

Management relies heavily on reports to analyze where the biggest problems may be. Unfortunately the data required to compile these reports too often comes from various sources and the reports are both created and managed manually; leaving the margin of error greater than what is within tolerance resulting in additional business risk and poor decisions.

These dispersed global teams and the use of out-of date information is too often producing product with sub-level quality.

An additional strain on the business’s profitability is the need to exert excessive energy and resources trying to resolve these quality related issues rather than spending the time focusing on the needs and desires of the customer, the result: a poor customer experience.

Domestic competition has been fierce; especially when we consider the affect that commoditization has had on the retail environment over the past two decades. Now with global competition heating up, the importance of educating your customers and building relationships is at a pinnacle point.

Using a collaborative management system to oversee the processes used for the development and the distribution of new product can greatly enhance the profitability margin of the retailer, but how?

Shorten Product Time-to-market

Using collaborative tools can assist product/project teams to spend more time making decisions and less time looking for information, which allows the team to work faster. Keeping product information in one shared database allows users to access real-time status and current product information. Having a Web-Based solution insures global groups can instantly share associated documents, such as technical packages or images, reducing downtime and inefficiency and shorten time to market.

Improve Product Quality

Through the use of a Web-Based application, Design can share ideas to the rest of the team from anywhere in the world so that quick decisions can be made. This results in better collaborative design decisions. Thus, better design better customer experience.

Develop Brand Loyalty

The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) says companies perform better when workers feel empowered. By providing your team with a shared work environment, users can easily collaborate to insure product consistency. This translates to the creation of a Brand that offers quality and consistency that customers can get to know and expect.

Reduce Product Development Waste

Effectively tracking the many steps required to develop a product is essential to insure waste is kept to a minimum. When deadlines are missed, costs increase. Resources spend time catching up and the result of tighter time lines too often results in increased quality errors. Having a robust system helps to insure less errors and more on-time delivery of product.

Employ a Project Management Tool to get the work done.

Strategic Decision Making

Using a system that allows management to view real-time project data, enables them to make decisions and communicate those decisions through the organization to insure that the work getting done aligns with your organization’s strategic goals and objectives.

Real-Time Reporting

Custom reporting for your organization is eminent in today’s hectic and challenging work place. Real-time reports keep busy executives on top of what is going on throughout the entire project lifecycle.

Real-Time Status

Shared project data gives managers the ability to track how a project is progressing at anytime. Having real-time project status available reduces the need for costly meetings or last minute manual reports that take time away from getting real work completed.

Visibility and Team Productivity

Having a central location for keeping track of dates, times, tasks, documents, and more keeps the whole team on the same page. Web-Based applications containing personal and shared calendars, e-mail notifications, and threaded notes keep your team in constant communication-helping them to get more done.

Any where & Any time & Any way

On-line tools that support dispersed teams, automatically adjusting dates and times based on the user’s time zone, and allowing work to be done in English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, or Chinese is a good choice for companies that need flexibility in the way they work.

Flexibility

Applications that have an available software development kit give you the power to integrate any application with your project management solution and leverage the value of your software investments. Integrations and custom data and views mean no disruptions to your workflow.

The Only Complete Solution

While traditional project and portfolio management solutions focus on either management or collaboration features, @task is the only software that provides both management and collaboration tools in a design that is easy to use and full of powerful features.

Underneath it all is the ability to integrate with any database, platform, browser or language as well as Manage, collaborate, and integrate equals one powerful solution.

Plus, it’s browser, platform, and database independent, so it can be used with any system, even on your favorite mobile device.

@Task – Work smart. Work happy.

To learn more about how to improve your Customer’s experience, contact us.

For more Information on how Alliance Project Management group can help your retail operation - Click Here