Retailers need infrastructures that help them create and manage flexible supply chains, understand and respond to customer needs, and exploit their brands effectively.

Like almost every other aspect of modern life, the pace of retailing has quickened and consumers have become more demanding. Food arrives at supermarkets just in time to go from unloading bay to shelf – and shoppers expect it to be fresher and get there in hours rather than days. When it comes to household goods, customers expect to take home delivery of items at a time to suit them. And in fashion retailing, clothing ranges change every four to six weeks, and what was seen on the catwalks or in the celebrity magazines one month is in the chain stores the next.

Faced with these challenges, retailers need to:

• optimise their supply chains, reducing overstocking and stock-outs while minimising stockholdings, warehouse space and transport costs;
• create flexible operational processes that allow them to introduce new products, enter new markets or respond to moves by competitors quickly and cost-effectively;
• understand customer behaviour to allow effective promotions, cross-selling and up-selling;
• improve customer service to deliver a consistent, high-quality brand experience; and
• develop cost-effective multi-channel marketing programmes to leverage their brand and serve customers through their preferred channels.

We help our clients in the retail sector develop infrastructures that meet these challenges. We work with them to assess their current operations and identify opportunities to reduce costs, increase agility or enhance service levels: redesigning processes, consolidating or virtualising technology platforms, or implementing new IT architectures. We help them set up shared services centres to eliminate duplication and create economies of scale. We can ensure their organisation is in the right shape for successful outsourcing. And we help them create an end-to-end view of services so that they can identify opportunities for new sources of revenue. Our proven approach to change management enables us to deliver significant improvements in performance for our clients.