How the retail store manager helps ensure supply chain success

11/17

How the retail store manager helps ensure supply chain success

Don't let store closures fool you — brick-and-mortar management remains pivotal to retail success.

he retail industry is changing rapidly, but even amid this change store managers remain the bedrock upon which retail empires are built.

Retail store managers need to serve customers and make sure they’re supporting their sales personnel. They oversee stocking, make sure promotions and signage are current, and schedule employees. With the rise in internet sales, though, that role has gotten more complicated. Managers may be saddled with additional responsibilities, like order fulfillment for shipping or in-store pickup, plus handling returns from online orders.

In some ways, technology helps make it easier to maintain product visibility and understand sales. But even with technology, overloading managers with additional duties means they may be spread too thin to support in-store sales.

Here’s a few ways the store manager is helping ensure retail supply chain success.

Separating responsibilities to face new challenges

Store managers are experimenting with different ways to handle store tasks, whether restocking the shelves or in-store fulfillment.

One model is to have a set of employees dedicated to picking for online products in the store, a dedicated group restocking shelves at night. That could include a separate manager as well. As an example, Home Depot now has separate employees handling restocking, so that front line employees can take care of customers, said Ronald Hess, associate professor of marketing at the Mason School of Business at the College of William & Mary.

“What Home Depot has done so brilliantly is eliminate as much as possible from the stores to make it easier for the managers and the stores to serve customers who walk in the door,” Hess said. By simplifying the environment, Home Depot customer satisfaction is up and the financials are good too. “My first reaction to picking in the store is that you’re adding complexities.” If floor salespeople are picking, then they’re not working with customers. “That equation usually never works,” Hess said.

The best customer-experience retailers are ones where the store managers are exceptional and are dedicated to serving customers. If you add on other responsibilities to their jobs, Hess said, that muddies the landscape.

How do stores adapt to in-store fulfillment?

One of the big changes for retail stores is customers buying online and picking up in-store.

Students at University of Tennessee Knoxville are working with a major retailer on a dorm design project, where students can design their dorm room and order everything online, then pick it up at the retailer closest to campus. “For back to college, this makes sense. You can have everything from bedspreads to waste baskets,” said Coleman Piper, the school’s executive in residence, who teaches retail strategy and operations.

Programs like this aren’t complicated, Piper said. It’s a matter of execution and paying attention to detail. The problem is when the store doesn’t stock the right products.

Source: https://www.supplychaindive.com/news/retail-store-manager-role-Black-Friday-holidays/511456/