Retailers in every category, worldwide, are constantly sprinting a marathon. Trying to outsmart the competition, be better, stronger, more profitable, and typically, trying to do more with less.To gain the competitive edge and build sustainable and relevant businesses for shoppers (while keeping your team sane),retailers need to have a streamlined Go-to-market process and be better at connecting with shoppers.
Which Go-to-market processes have the most potential?
Retail go-to-market (GTM) processes refer to the systems and process used within your business to bring your products or services to market through retail channels. This is a critical set of activities and actions that makes or breaks the offers and promotions you take to your consumers.
If you know your teams constantly battle to get campaigns or promotional offers consistently executed and delivered, there are too many hours spent on implementing the promotion in support office and store and still compliance is inconsistent, or you want to be more competitive with what your offer looks like, read on!
Whether you strive to step ahead of your competition (or simply keep up), aim to retain your staff for consistency and forward momentum, you must be constantly asking yourselves...
Is there a better way we could be doing this?
The reality of retail today is that most retail networks have multiple store formats, different fixtures within these store formats, a magnitude of marketing assets that fit the differing fixtures and an assortment of store profiles, yet they need to deliver a seamless customer experience in every store. Does this sound familiar?
This makes the marketing, merchandise, and operations teams’ jobs extremely hard when it comes to planning and executing the promotional programs (and even core ranges) in each store. With only “5 minutes” to spend on most tasks as each team member goes through the process, any bump along the way becomes a mountain with huge flow on effects and a disappointed execution at store level resulting in a poor customer experience. Then we do it all again next time!
I hear you say, “How can we ensure we deliver a consistent customer experience when it feels like every store has its own unique footprint!?”
Firstly, you need to take a step back from sprinting the marathon and double check what it is that we are doing. Take a good hard look at the information and data we have on hand, set out our Go-to-market process and see where the issues lie, what pain points each team member has and fix it….not with a band-aid but with good systems and processes that work.
If the demand on the teams every promo cycle is getting harder and harder, then now is the time to review your Go-to-market process, identify any pain points and see where technology can assist. More and more we have to allow technology to do the heavy lifting so we can concentrate our efforts on what good customer experience looks like in all our stores at any time of the month.
Any retailer that is not investing in technology to assist in their Go-to-market process will only get left behind, by either losing staff that are burnt out or losing customers to their streamlined competitor who can execute a successful customer experience every time. Technological innovation has always sparked better retail practices, both for the customer and retailer. The right technology is there to help the process not add more pain to it.
If you are constantly dealing with:
compliance issues at store level
inter-departmental resistance
communication breakdown between stores and headquarters
mistakes in collateral sent out to stores…
…your Go-to-market process is simply not working. Retail always works under extreme time pressure and without good systems and processes you are set up for failure more often than success. We always find it quite despairing that team members week in and week out go through the same pain doing their job, knowing there must be a better way but with no time or resource to investigate it. The good news is you are not alone. It is a common issue in retail – how do I get off the spinning wheel!
RetailO2 are experts in Go-to-market audits and refinement. We have worked with some of New Zealand’s largest retailers and diverse store networks. We know where the paint points sit and where the greatest value can be added. More importantly, we can help your team focus on where to prioritise and trust, we will not only get the process optimised, you will see the returns in happy internal team members and stores delivering compliant promotions quickly and consistently. Cost efficiencies are gained but we also see sales conversion increase.....dramatically.
An efficient Go-to-market process and systems could see you join our clients who have reduced their print by 20%, reduced their Go-to-market timelines by 25%, improved in-store communication with store specific merchandising planograms, 50% reduction on time spent on price ticketing, and now have internal teams working collaboratively throughout the process.
Don’t just wonder; get more curious about your Go-to-market process and the business benefits you will drive by contacting Gina at gina@retailo2.co.nz. Why not check out these automation tools in our toolbox that can help your Go-to-market process and deliver compliance. They are both life changing and affordable.
Gina Brugh is RX's Merchandise, Process and Systems Design Specialist and Co-Founder of RetailO2 (our sister business). Gina is a naturally curious person who often asks the questions "no one else is game to." Gina currently works alongside businesses to review their “go to market” systems related to marketing, operations, merchandise, experience and the customer. With a background and career straddling marketing, merchandise and operations across retail, manufacturing and supplier sectors Gina helps businesses optimise their process and systems design through automation and process streamlining.