Fortune Favors the Bold

You may have had the opportunity to participate in Parker Avery’s Reconstructing Retail webinar series during the early stages of the 2020 pandemic. We hope you found value in them and more importantly, relevance to your own current situation. In one of the last sessions, “Beginning the Journey: Emerging from COVID-19,” we discussed several points regarding triaging your situation, planning your immediate next steps (and your mid and long-term activities), and reconstructing your business.

Nobody was prepared for the gravity of the circumstances surrounding COVID-19. Companies were forced into a rapid-fire assess/decide/act mode unlike any they had likely ever encountered. Yet, companies endured, and some even thrived during these turbulent times. We all hope and pray that another event of this magnitude never occurs again. But in many cases, the circumstances uncovered the very best of organizations, and these characteristics should not be put back ‘into the drawer.’ Rather, leading companies need to operationalize these skills and put them to good use as we all emerge from the pandemic.

Planning immediate actions and incorporating them with mid and long-term needs is still important. But leading companies will create an agile and flexible model that allows them to analyze new needs and prioritize them against ongoing activities, current events, and other previous plans. The days of leaving plans locked in once developed are gone, and this approach is no longer advisable. Being nimble and spinning up new efforts and/or altering in-progress initiatives, though more challenging, will separate the future winners from the losers.

While speed and an intensified sense of urgency are traits of the future leading companies, building a governance framework to ensure these necessary events are occurring on a regular and consistent basis will be another competency front-runners must demonstrate. The governance will ensure the assess/decide/act model regularly prioritizes and addresses key risks. It will also ensure key decisions are communicated to the necessary stakeholders. Without proper governance, the speed of external change and your company’s rapid reaction activities could lead to internal chaos.

We are now at a critical inflection point in the history of our industry. Every enterprise has a choice of how to respond—they can revert to pre-COVID-19 operations and hope to get back to where they were (or more likely, where they were striving to be). For certain, that is the logical and safe next step. But I titled this blog, “Fortune Favors the Bold” for a reason: those companies with the courage to think beyond the now, project their future selves, innovate, and find ways to delight their current and future customers will separate themselves from the pack. These industry leaders will develop the muscle memory to rapidly test and learn with innovative product and service ideas. They may fail along the way, but they will assuredly be amongst the group of highly successful companies that will blaze a trail and set the bar high for all others.

You may be asking yourself, “How can my company do this? We have never been trailblazers.” You may not have the model of Google, Apple, or Amazon, but nobody knows your business and your customers better than you. Leveraging the intimate knowledge of your business, insights into where your customers’ wants and needs are heading, and your team’s passion to seize the opportunity to leapfrog other companies will enable you to innovate. As we’ve advised our clients and colleagues many times over the past few weeks: Be bold. Be “in the arena” to determine your company’s fate rather than on the sidelines hoping your competition does not pass you by. Apply what you and others have learned over the past two months: rapid decision-making, a “test and learn” approach, an understanding that not all ideas are going to be winners, and yet some may bring surprisingly positive results—and the resilience to withstand the setbacks and forge ahead. Harness these learnings and the passion and capabilities of your team and you CAN achieve your audacious goals.

The state of your digital capabilities is going to be a key determinant of how quickly you can pivot to embrace new, innovative operations. If we’ve learned one thing during the pandemic, it’s that the pace at which you’ve been ‘traveling’ on this digital trek must be accelerated. But where should you focus your efforts? The specific areas in which to be courageous include omnichannel fulfillment, as demonstrated by companies, like Michael’s, Bed Bath and Beyond, and Kendra Scott, who quickly implemented capabilities such as home delivery, curbside pick-up, and ship-from-store. Rethinking how and where customer returns should occur, as well as other shopping options, such as cashless in-store payment and contactless curbside delivery, will enhance your customers’ omnichannel shopping experience options.

Another key digital focal area is improved data and analytical tools. Retailers and consumer brands must consider the criticality of accurate and timely data as well as advanced analytics in helping drive improved decision-making across the enterprise. This effort should be applied with urgency, and traditional analytics implementation timeframes are likely not quick enough. Applied to your new business objectives, analytics will enable speed to insights, versus analytics without business focus, which is meaningless. Some example analytics priorities that will be important in the near term include forecasting and sensing demand, supporting omnichannel fulfillment, and determining how to deploy inventory across various distribution points, including stores.

Further, improvements in the go-to-market development process, via digitization efforts including voice-of-the-customer crowdsourcing and digital sampling, will greatly improve the effectiveness of your assortment and the speed with which products can be brought to market. These are just a few ideas, but as noted, the digital journey must be accelerated and targeted at enhancing the customer experience.

Parker Avery believes so much in the characteristics and approach described above that we have developed a set of retail consulting services focused on helping leading brands and retailers cycle through the triage, plan, and reconstruct (or reimagine) steps quickly and effectively. We bring a hands-on, action-oriented engagement model that will ensure your teams have a partner who is in the “war room” with you. Our teams not only help establish the approach and the governance required, but we also roll up our sleeves and assist in getting “stuff” done. We offer innovative, pragmatic ideas and recommendations that can assist in the ideation efforts required to envision the future of your business model.

It would be our distinct pleasure to join forces with your teams to boldly pursue the steps needed to make you one of our industry’s future leaders. On behalf of The Parker Avery Group, we wish you and yours health and safety.