Getting Smarter About AI in Retail Planning [Video]
Volatile consumer demand. Soaring expectations for service and responsiveness. Endless purchasing options. How can retailers expect to succeed? The answer lies in using artificial intelligence (AI) to gather data and make fact-based, strategic decisions — no matter how many internal and external factors are involved….
Finding the Value in Your Control Tower
Talking with supply chain leaders across the industry, it’s clear that supply chain control towers are being tasked with more and more functionality. It’s a natural evolution. After all, control towers collect and leverage large data sets from across the end-to-end supply chain. If data…
Mind the Gap: Closing the Hunger Gap in a World of Food Waste
It’s that time of year again. As we’ve entered the season of thanks and giving back, it creates a moment of pause of what is it that we are truly appreciative for, and how can we spread more cheer amongst those around us. Growing up…
Is S&OE the new S&OP?
During a recent dialog with a Vice President of Supply Chain for a major U.S. retailer, I had the opportunity to ask an important question. I asked how much of that Vice President’s time was spent on truly strategic supply chain planning projects vs tactical…
Takeaways from the Gartner Supply Chain Planning Summit
Having just returned from the Gartner Supply Chain Planning Summit in Denver, I am energized about the state of our industry. The quality of the content, the number of attendees, and the depth of perspectives all contributed to the buzz about the conference and the…
Personalization Across the Supply Chain
A couple of years ago, the concept of having everything personalized arose. It was not marketing tactic, but was a pending reality with consumers willing to be different. Moving from a mass market where one product-fits-all to a personalized offer was, and is still, an…
Resiliency; the Fine Art of Balancing E-commerce & Brick and Mortar Investments
This past week, Forever 21, a fast-fashion apparel retailer with over 700 stores and 30,000 employees worldwide announced filing for Chapter 11. While the news struck the retail world, they aren’t the first large format retailer to announce store closures to re-center themselves and focus…
5 Consumer Perceptions of the U.S. Trade War with China and Holiday Shopping
If you’ve ever watched a game of ping-pong from the sidelines, you know how dizzying it can be to keep up with the fast-paced changes of the sport. The ongoing trade war between the U.S. and China has been a ping-pong-like match for the ages,…
Retail Pricing: How Leading Retailers Are Leveraging AI to Fight Back
The first blog in this two-part series focused on the primary challenge facing retailers today: mega-retailers have forced prices down, based on their economies of scale and hyper-optimized supply chains. Smaller retailers have responded by creating short-term promotions that draw shoppers into the store, but…
Retail Pricing: Understanding How Power Shifted to the Consumer
Remember the good old days when retailers controlled pricing? With limited competition, they were able to offer standardized assortments across all their sales outlets, purchased in a manner that delivered the lowest possible unit cost. Pricing was based on a set of established rules, defined…