Project Description
Assessment of in-store labor activities focused on inventory management, merchandising and customer service to simplify and streamline processes while optimizing the labor budget.
The Client
A $16+ billion small-box discount retailer with over 10,000 stores in the United States.
The Challenge
Client leadership recognized the need to better understand and optimize its in-store staffing model, processes, and labor standards. The retailer strategically operates with a very lean store staff, therefore sought to validate this approach and focus labor on greater value-add activities. The client wished to identify opportunities to deploy more efficient in-store processes in order to optimize store payroll spend.
The Parker Avery Solution
The Parker Avery Group performed an evaluation of current in-store processes across multiple store formats and geographic locations, taking into consideration the impacts of store size, volume and other pertinent factors. The studies were conducted over several weeks to capture variances in store traffic. The project team devised specific recommendations for improvement, focusing on areas that offered the greatest potential to streamline and simplify store processes:
- Front end (checkout/returns)
- Inventory management (receiving/stocking/RTV)
- Store merchandising activities (resets/promotions)
- Back office/management (invoice/cash handling)
This work effort included validating the actual time required to perform store activities and comparing those times with existing engineered standards, identifying key areas requiring improved process design, performing a gap analysis against leading practices, and developing a set of prioritized opportunities both in-store and upstream that offer the greatest potential for efficiency gains.
Parker Avery's recommendations focused on removing as much non-value work from the store staff as possible by identifying ways to optimize inventory and reduce merchandising tasks.
The Result
Parker Avery’s recommendations included short-term actions and long term visions, as well as a high level assessment of implementation impacts and business benefits. The client is using these recommendations as input to an initiative to drive merchandising reset improvements and optimize in-store inventory management efficiencies.