Category management has reached an inflection point. In a volatile context characterized by rapidly shifting customer demands and expectations, rising prices, strained margins, ongoing supply chain instability, and increasing fulfillment complexity, getting the right product into the right place at exactly the right time is…

Think back over the last three years: a global pandemic, ongoing supply shortages, the Great Resignation, war in Europe, the return inflation, and the threat of recession. Then think about your current merchandise financial planning approach: starting with previous year’s performance before spending countless hours…

In the retail industry, on-time in-full (OTIF) isn’t just a target — it’s the value system at the heart of retail that keeps the industry alive. When orders are delivered on time and in full, the fulfilled promise doesn’t just build trust with the customer;…

Historically, the retail industry has talked about experience through one lens and one lens only — the customer’s. And for good reason, too — customer experience (CX) is a known driver of customer loyalty, one that is sometimes more powerful than brand or price. While…

In 2023, the major trends that impacted supply chain planning ranged from geopolitical conflicts, inflationary pressures, a recessionary environment, and extreme weather patterns associated with climate change. Last year demonstrated the sheer range and complexity of the macro forces impacting toplines, increasing costs, and eroding…

It may come as an unpleasant surprise that competing KPIs are destroying value across the supply chain. However, the short-sighted fixation on resolving specific, isolated challenges leaves retailers blind to the reality that approaching supply chain challenges with a synchronized “end-to-end” strategy unlocks unseen potential…

In our exploration of end-to-end retail integration, we’ve laid out a sensible grocery retail roadmap for getting there, what it looks like in other verticals when done right, and errors to avoid when making the transition. We’ve also explored how a «microservice” approach to achieving…

Ability to scale remains the keystone to holding together retail’s effort to transition its architecture for the modern era that pits cost against customer expectations. The retailers modernizing toward that end-to-end integration will be those best aligned with that new paradigm. Faster fulfillment, more optionality,…

Online and offline, simple and sophisticated technologies continue to shape and reshape the contours of consumer engagement. That’s before you even factor the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) in retail. In Beyond the Aisle blog post, we unpacked the theory, and a 10-phase roadmap for…

As grocery retail value chains have innovated past new challenges, increased value chain integration asks a relevant and timely question: is it time for retail value chains to behave and operate as one single ecosystem? Given the sheer logistics and pressures involved in balancing consumer…