The keynote address at the Retail CFO Summit was delivered by Mr. CP Toshniwal, Executive Director, Future Lifestyle Fashion Limited.
Below are some of the key highlights from the same:
Working capital management is a crucial function of a CFO and success of new ideas depend on it.
- Think about Business first – whether business is “doable, moveable or executable”.
- In retail, many ideas fail because of working capital management issues.
- New ideas have to be balanced with the risk attached.
- Only money does not make great business.
- India is an evolving market. People, technology and environment are dynamic and hence, there should be flexibility to manage the change.
- Too fast growth can be detrimental if the system, process and people do not scale up in line with the rate of growth.
Three policy changes which will take retail to the next level – implementing GST, abolishing the MRP concept and the Essential Commodities Act.
- GST is to be brought in. It will change the whole landscape in Supply Chain Management in India.
- India Retail has lot of challenges. MRP regulation need to be made relevant.
- Essential Commodity Act is to be relooked at.
- Business ideas may or may not work. But you need to be clear on your capacity & quantum of loss you can bear.
We have terabytes of data but we need to take meaningful & actionable information from this data.
- If merchandise is not replaced then retail shop becomes a warehouse.
- The law of averages does not work in retail.
- Managers have a lot of information with them. Only relevant information should be given to the team so as to not confuse them.
- Pick key metrics and keep communicating them consistently.
- While building your sales, you need to also build corresponding systems & processes.