Digging DEEP: Achieving Omnichannel Resilience
Earlier this week, Sam Iosevich and Marty Anderson participated in a virtual networking event hosted by Parker Avery partner Synoptek, a global systems integrator (GSI) and managed IT services provider (MSP). This invitation-only, private event was titled, “Reimagining Retail in 2020 and Beyond: Strategies To Modernize, [...]
Deep Analytics: Why Retailers Need It Now More Than Ever
In this episode of our Talk Retail to Me podcast, we interviewed Parker Avery experts Clay Parnell and Sam Iosevich to discuss how retailers and consumer brands can embrace analytics into their business models to enable cross-functional collaboration and deliver meaningful financial results. In this week's blog, [...]
Retailing Curbside: Six Keys to the New Omnichannel Customer Experience
I’ve been impressed by the efforts of many retailers over the past several months to quickly deploy new capabilities to allow ongoing commerce while dealing with the complexity and unknowns around both COVID-19 and unprecedented supply chain disruptions. As we outlined in a prior blog, “You Don’t Have to [...]
Fortune Favors the Bold
The frenetic pace of the past two months has been exhausting. However, the early-mover advantage goes to companies that institutionalize newly tapped skills into their daily operations. Simply put, there are benefits to those companies that have fine-tuned their ability to quickly analyze new information, solicit input from [...]
Reconstructing Retail: Defying Yesterday’s Logic
The Parker Avery Group hosted our third Reconstructing Retail webinar last Thursday, "Beginning the Journey: Emerge from COVID-19." Here, we recap key messages, as well as answer questions from the webinar attendees. Before talking about the future, we thought it made sense to spend a couple [...]
Triaging Your Inventory: Decisions for Stability
During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, The Parker Avery Group conducted a 4-part webinar series, Reconstructing Retail. For those of you that were able to participate with us, thank you. This series covered some important topics and was focused on helping our clients and friends [...]
2020 NRF Recap: Thriving through Turbulence
NRF’s 2020 Big Show brought many things we expected to see: large Sunday and Monday crowds, a myriad of solutions incorporating machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI and ML), along with a handful of new and promising technologies. The event also came with the unexpected: a determined focus on [...]
BOPIS and BORIS: What They Mean for Your Business
Today’s consumers have infinite shopping choices and rising expectations for a positive customer experience. They’re demanding more flexibility and convenience, both in how they make purchases and returns. With this, we’re seeing many retailers look to omnichannel capabilities to augment their existing customer experience, perhaps most notably including BOPIS [...]
Chasing Retail’s Shiny Objects
Partner Amanda Astrologo recently led a discussion based on a Parker Avery point-of-view titled "Future-Proofing Retail: Building a Solid Foundation for Tomorrow." Amanda stressed that retailers must ensure foundational systems and capabilities, as well as a solid change management program, are in place before embarking on new [...]
Scrap Your Employee Training Plan
The word 'training' can mean many different things depending on the participants and situation. For pet owners, it means teaching a puppy, kitten, and even goats (yes, you read that right) how to behave properly and perhaps some tricks—with the reward typically a treat and the praise of [...]
Retail Priorities: Getting Through the Transformation Zone
Last week we spent a few days in Minneapolis with about 200 retailers attending the 2019 Oracle Retail Cross Talk conference. This year, Oracle went back to their roots and put the event's focus purely on retail. This was a well-received change by the attendees, and [...]
Five Proven Mindsets That Drive Implementation Success
Five Proven Mindsets That Drive Implementation Success Over the past few decades, The Parker Avery Group has worked with dozens of retail and consumer goods organizations in developing and implementing new business processes, organizational designs, and supporting systems. All of these efforts demanded select business areas or [...]
Retail Analytics: When Magic Meets Reality
One of Parker Avery’s key service areas focuses on the identification and implementation of new business capabilities—to achieve any number of retailers’ strategic objectives. In this capacity, we work closely with our retail clients in understanding their desired future state, developing detailed requirements necessary to achieve future [...]
Take 5: A Return to Retail Roots
The Parker Avery Group recently concluded an assortment planning project covering common phases of a system implementation—design, build, test, train, organizational change management (OCM), and sustainment. We faced expected challenges such as gaining consensus on requirements, sticking to decisions, and varying approaches to designing a limited set of reports—all while [...]
Managing Change on a Global Scale
Recently, Parker Avery published a new case study, Global Organizational Change Management (OCM) which focused on a project that encompassed not only a global retail and manufacturing organization but also massively impacted the company’s pricing, purchase order management, omnichannel order management, inventory management, supply/demand matching, and master [...]
The Way We’ve Always Done It
Retailers bring Parker Avery on board to help solve a variety of business challenges—many of which revolve around replacing legacy systems (including the often-prolific use of complex spreadsheets—even in large retailers). These projects typically involve a fair amount of defining what the client’s desired future state is [...]
Ask the Experts: Retail Inventory Deployment
Most retailers are grappling with the challenge of how to most effectively and efficiently deploy inventory through their DCs, factories/suppliers, stores, or a combination of any/all to meet end consumer needs through their various sales channels (brick-and-mortar, e-commerce, wholesale customers, etc.). In this edition of Parker Avery’s “Ask [...]
Ask the Experts: Retail System Implementations
In this edition of Parker Avery's “Ask the Experts” series, we focus on retail system implementations. Implementation projects come in all different sizes and flavors, and they bring the possibility of greatly enhancing capabilities in a specific functional area or across an entire company. Implementation projects also [...]
Ask the Experts: Retail Master Data
Understandably, retail master data is not the “sexiest” of topics and isn’t hyped on media headlines like artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality (VR). However, master data in retail is arguably one of the most critical areas to comprehend, define, and manage appropriately, particularly when embarking [...]
Change Before You Have To
CONTENTS Focus on Benefits Realization Ensure Executive Sponsorship Approach Change with Flexibility Take Deliberate Steps in Embracing a Change Culture Recent changes in retail are driven by the need to adapt to constant shifting consumer behaviors, expectations, and desires as well as to address increasing competitive pressures. [...]
Inventory Management is the Bridge Between Online and Brick-and-Mortar
It’s surprising to some that the physical retail space is a key component of online shopping. While consumers often start their shopping journey online, many still visit brick-and-mortar stores to see and try products in person before buying. And increasingly, consumers buy online and pick up in-store (BOPIS) [...]
Lazy Shoppers Wanted
“Human beings are fundamentally lazy and they don’t want to leave the couch to buy stuff.” I read this statement in an article about digital shopping and same-day delivery a while ago, and took note of it – not because I agree with it, but [...]
Time to Repair the Roof
August is already upon us, and for many, this means summer vacations are wrapping up and back-to-school shopping is in full swing – at least from the perspectives of consumers and store operations personnel. Right now, in the corporate offices and halls of retailers, all focus [...]
Ask the Experts: Retail Package Selection
In this edition of Parker Avery's "Ask the Experts" series, CEO Robert Kaufman, along with senior managers David Birdsall and Heidi Csencsits discuss the challenges many retailers face when embarking on initiatives that involve selecting a new software solution. Q1: When [...]
How to Be a Project Sponsor
In many of our past thought leadership pieces, we have discussed the importance of project leadership, especially as it pertains to organizational change management (OCM). Some of the highlights or key takeaways include selecting executive sponsorship at the right organizational level—those who are empowered to lead [...]