Retail Supply Chain Collaboration: 3 Catalysts for Success

The business of retail continues to push forward on a rapid pace of innovation, creating major challenges for supply chain teams.

Today’s retailers attack the market with activities ranging from developing unique products to helping customers finance their purchases.

With suppliers more geographically dispersed than ever, a product mix that has become broader and more complex, and increasing pressure from ever-shortening product lifecycles, retail supply chain teams must look for ways to improve in-stock availability, introduce new product offerings, manage volume on door-buster promotions and streamline omni-channel initiatives.

Retail supply chain executives face strategic questions like:

• “How can I best serve my customers?”
• “What kind of supply chain network should I use?”
• “How much inventory do I need and where?”
• “Can we handle the volume on the next promotion?”
• “Are we meeting the needs of customers in all our markets?”
• “How can we leverage technology more efficiently?”

One source of guidance comes from Deloitte’s comprehensive Retail Supply Chain Maturity Model.

A major theme that emerges from this model is that leading retailers focus on collaboration with their suppliers. However, according to the Aberdeen Group, less than 50% of mid-market retail companies collaborate with their core suppliers (1).

Deloitte and Logility have helped a wide spectrum of retailers and suppliers exploit collaboration opportunities. This paper presents the critical touch points that can produce a more consumer-centric, agile, innovative, and efficient value chain.

(1) Aberdeen Group; Retail Supply Chain Collaboration: Why Mid-Market Companies Struggle to Keep Pace, February 2013