Human Resources

Performance Management in the Retail Industry

Achieving Superior Corporate Performance

AUTHORS:

Christine Mullie, Russ Hill Bob Bunzey, Cortney Claiborne, Sagarika Jaganathan, Dorit Shackleton, Derek Stobbart, David Townley

C O N T R I B U TO R S :

AU DI E NCE:

Retail Professionals

Executive Summary Section Heading

On a daily basis, retailer managers are confronted with a variety of high-impact decisions that must be made as quickly as possible in response to a variety of problems including fraud, out-of-stocks, ad misprints, employee scheduling crises, and customer service issues. At the same time, dwindling margins have resulted in the reallocation or reduction of labor. Managers cannot possibly respond to everything, so priorities must be established. Over the last few decades, a variety of systems and technologies—such as human resource, point of sale, and inventory control systems—have become available to help retailers set priorities and make tough decisions. Unfortunately, retailers now rely on multiple systems that often operate on a standalone basis. Information is abundant but resides in disparate silos—making it difficult for employees to access and share as well as for executives to use in decision making. For example, marketing managers, merchants, and operations managers in a given organization are often making decisions based solely on their individual roles—and the limited information available to them—and may not necessarily be acting collaboratively. In the worst cases, one manager may be working from information that conflicts with that presented to another manager, such as a report that has not been updated to reflect the most recent transactions. This can lead to individual functional areas of the company acting independently of one another, and possibly even in direct conflict with each other. What still remains elusive in the retail industry today is the ability to integrate—both technically and functionally. By...