Project Description
Retail technology selection, strategy, and roadmap, improving antiquated processes and systems to support a complex business model.
The Client
A $2b+ specialty apparel retailer with retail, wholesale, direct, and international businesses
The Challenge
This retailer’s strategic plans were hampered by a number of issues and intricacies:
- Complex multi-channel merchandising, sourcing, planning, and inventory business model
- Rapidly expanding international business
- Antiquated processes and systems
- Inefficient planning, pricing, sourcing, buying and inventory management practices
- No integrated calendar or process
- Separate retail, direct, and internet businesses
The Parker Avery Solution
The Parker Avery Group assisted client executives in defining the strategy, developing processes, and outlining a detailed action plan. The scope included evaluating and selecting a suite of retail technology solutions to enable the strategy.
Key Parker Avery activities included:
- Defining integrated processes across all channels
- Outlining roles and responsibilities to support new processes
- Benchmarking processes
- Reviewing the solution landscape and determining a short list of vendors
- Developing technical requirements
- Evaluating and selecting software provider(s)
- Defining detailed capabilities roadmap and action plan
- Developing a detailed business case with timing, resources, costs, and benefits
The Result
As a result of the retail technology selection and strategy project, the client conservatively expects to realize:
- Between 200-600 bps in margin (varies by channel)
- 0.75 improvement in turn
- 0.5% transition of product from markdown to regular price
- A one time reduction of approximately $90 million in inventory
Additionally, the client initiated work on multiple project-related initiatives at the conclusion of the project.
