Retail focused analyst coverage
Add comment April 9th, 2008 David Bush - Iasta
If you are in procurement and in the retail industry, you have benefited from a large focus of attention recently. Aberdeen has released a new report, Business Intelligence in Retail: A Best-in-Class Roadmap for Performance Improvement, which deals with improvement on spend under management. And AMR, is having a retail research bonanza in 2008, with the most recent, Sourcing Revs Up Retailers, recently coming out.
These are great reports for the specific industry mentioned. In particular, AMR describes the differences of the retail environment for sourcing:
- Sourcing scale—A retailer often designs and sources tens of thousands of new products or SKUs every year, with sourcing changes across multiple seasons adding to the complexity.
- Consumer centric—Consumer-driven sales place significant demands on the sourcing process, especially in the area of quality assurance and social responsibility.
- Process and systems complexity—Retail sourcing processes and systems tend to be more complex than those found in other sourcing environments.
They mention that this industry is moving into integrated PLM, product design, visibility and collaboration and vendors need to support this functionality. I see this transformation taking a long time, as many retailers are still trying to get a handle on these parts one at a time. However, the point is valid and most companies should be looking long term for advanced, integrated technology.
Entry Filed under: Analysts/Research, General, Supply Management Best Practices, Technology
