The Retail Operations and Benchmarking Excellence Survey 2013 (ROBES) is a first of its kind in India. After 2 decades of high growth, and at a time when the Industry is focusing on profitability, dealing with the disruptive innovation of e-tail, and anticipating FDI rollout \u2013 the survey provides the first quantitative benchmarks for operating metrics across fashion, department stores and value retailers.<\/p>\n

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The study provides a \u201chealth-check\u201d of the industry, and was released at the Retail Leadership Summit, 2013. The launch was followed by a panel discussion \u2013 panelists included Mohit Kampani<\/b>, Chief Executive, Spencer’s Retail, Subhash Chandra L<\/b>, Managing Director, Sangeetha Mobiles, Vineet Gautam<\/b>, Country Head, Bestseller India and Vinay Nadkarni<\/b>, MD & CEO,Globus Stores Private Limited. The panel was moderated by J Rajgopal and Anil Rajpal from TCS.<\/p>\n

The panel was uniformly complimentary on the fact that an objective, quantitative basis to measure and benchmark operational performance had come into existence.\u00a0 By providing a view on key priorities \u2013 at a store level, and a company level \u2013 the study will help add sanity to the planning \/ budgeting process \u2013 by \u201cquantifying\u201d the CEO grapevine \u2013 as it were.<\/p>\n

ROBES highlighted a few areas where there is a disconnect between stated strategic objective and process maturity \u2013 for example \u2013 customer satisfaction is seen as a high priority area but one out of two respondents do not have a metric \u2013 a customer satisfaction index-\u00a0 to measure,\u00a0 monitor and manage.<\/p>\n

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Inventory management as an area has become stronger \u2013 better visibility through perpetual stock-take measures, increase in bar-code scanning of incoming and outgoing merchandise and higher control over shrinkage means that the industry has increased process maturity in this area.<\/p>\n

While the study revealed that most retailers use mystery shopping exercises as a way to quantify customer satisfaction \u2013 Vineet Gautam was of the view that for fashion retailers \u2013 Exit Surveys were probably more relevant because they provided the customer\u2019s view, undiluted by the filter of the market research agency carrying out the Mystery Shopping exercise.<\/p>\n

That value retailers do not uniformly measure queue length and billing time is a huge wake up call for industry.\u00a0 This is because \u2013 as Spencer\u2019s Kampani put it \u2013 \u201c7 out of the 10 metrics that builds consumer loyalty are around on-the-floor experience.\u00a0\u00a0 Consumers don\u2019t seek only price \u2013 even in the value retail segment.\u201d<\/p>\n

ROBES showed that investing in loyalty programs can pay off in terms of sales. The panel felt that loyalty programs need to be handled carefully as Vinay Nadkarni \u00a0put it \u2013 \u201cYou can\u2019t buy loyalty!\u201d \u2013 He spoke about creating loyalty through \u201cA 1000 wow moments a day\u201d \u2013 an internal initiative where each of the 1000 front end staff of Globus focuses on creating one \u201cwow\u201d service moment for a customer every day.<\/p>\n

Having mature processes helps to extend the product proposition to service as well. For example \u2013 in the case of Sangeetha Mobiles, the business is almost 4 decades old. Front line staff are trained to emphasize that they do not \u201cprovide the cheapest\u201d price; the vintage brand combined with the relative lack of pricing pressure means that the company has been able to introduce innovation in service. All phones sold are automatically insured; and the company manages insurance claims for customers \u2013 to ensure that the service promise is met by the insurer.\u00a0 Similarly, for high value purchases, they offer a \u201cdoor-to-door pick up and drop\u201d service in the large cities, for time-strapped customers, this has proven valuable.<\/p>\n

Attrition has been an issue for most retailers. One\u00a0 innovation being used to combat this is an experiment by Bestseller where they are delinking increments from appraisals\u00a0 – and instead moving employees into a \u201cloyalty\u201d program.<\/p>\n

Another highlight of ROBES was the lack of focus on managing sales promotion expenses. The panel was unequivocal that this is a problem today. As Kampani put it \u201cIt\u2019s a paradox while, on the one hand, we are all struggling for profitability, on the other, one of our biggest spends \u2013 is not managed intensively. I worry that this phenomenon will lead to retailers competing using a \u201cLeast Common Denominator\u201d approach \u2013 i.e. play \u2018copy-cat\u2019 on promotional offers. What you then do – is train the customer to be disloyal \u2013 customer service will not matter in such a situation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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