History of Omni-Channel. Merchandising In The Crosshairs

Merchandising is typically based on planning two ways – top down and bottoms up. In the top down scenario, the retailer declares a growth target: “We plan on growing sales by 5% next year.” And then it is up to merchandisers to figure out where and how that growth will come. If the retailer is on the ball, they then reconcile these two – the expected budgets for revenue and the expected number of units sold – to see if they come anywhere near each other in terms of expectations.

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Deliberate Learning vs Deliberate Practice

I watched a thought provoking video from the fabulous Dan North about why we should be focused on deliberate learning over deliberate practice. I found it thought provoking as it’s challenged beliefs, but seemingly not enough to change them. I’m now just confused. This is how I’ve interpreted his argument coding katas are examples of…

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Constraints On Effective Product Development

What company wouldn’t love to have its product development efforts be more effective? Be able to release new products and product updates with fewer delays and overruns, with higher quality and at lower cost? And be sure of the product-market fit, too?

Many companies spend inordinate amounts of time, effort and management attention on just this. And yet reap little in the way of benefits from that investment.

Why is this? What are the blockers (constraints) frustrating these ambitions?

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What Does Personalization Mean To Your Brand?

In an age when personalization is on the lips of nearly every solution provider and every retail conference attendee, RSR’s experience has thus far been that genuine personalization is still a long ways off.

The best-performing retailers understand this fact, and in our latest benchmark report on Mobillity in Retail, tell us they recognize that deeper customer engagement’s greatest promise is to drive sales.

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Wahnsinn ist das. Wahnsinn. Heller Wahnsinn!

This is madness. Madness. Sheer madness! That’s what we often think when other people do things we “know” make no sense or are bound to turn out badly.

Predicting the future can be a tricky thing. Particularly predicting the outcome of an action within a Complex Adaptive System such as a Company, or on a smaller scale, something like a software project.

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The World Of Retail Financing. Lending, Private Equity, Leasebacks And Turnarounds

The tagline for the CFA is pretty clear: It’s “The Association For Professionals In The Asset-based Lending And Factoring Industry.”Now, this may sound dry as toast to some of you, but indulge me a few minutes here…because truth be told, without the companies that are part of this group, the retail industry would quite literally come to a screeching halt. And for those of you who self-identify as “laggards” – sales running below the rate of inflation, members of this group, who specialize in financing and turnaround planning for depressed companies, may make the difference between survival and your company’s end of days. That’s how important a lender or restructurer who understands retail can be.

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Rightshifting In A Nutshell

The Agile approach to software and product development has been around for something like fifteen years now. Its roots go back at least another fifteen years before that. In all that time, more and more folks have tried it out, and more and more of those folks have found it wanting in some degree. This presentation explains where Agile fits in the broader scope of organisation-wide effectiveness, and suggests what needs to change to move on from the Agile approach.

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Profitable Fulfillment Are We There Yet?

Back in January, the folks at Aptos asked us to help them figure out the success retailers are having with cross-channel fulfillment. We all know that many retailers are willing to let customers “have it our way” when it comes to satisfying demand. We also had a feeling that it might be working, but it likely wasn’t working all that well.

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