TECHNOLOGY

ENHANCING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF RETAIL BUYING TRIPSA buyer on a buying trip is inundated with an information and situations where effective decisions have to be made, sometimes instantly. Let’s see how retailers can improve the effi ciency of buying trips through the use of technology

By Shijo Sunny Thomas

ROUND TRIP TO THE SHELF:

Most people would

agree with TS Eliot

when he said: “The

journey not the

arrival matters.”

Mention that to

a retail buyer on a buying trip, you

might get a serious frown. A buyer’s

journey begins much before she

embarks on that buying trip and ends

much after her return. Buying is one

of the most critical functions in the

retail business. A buyer is someone

who is responsible for the planning

and selection of merchandise that will

be made available in retail channels.

The level of information that a buyer

has ranges from customer demand

data, product specifi cations and

market trends to fi nancial budgets

and vendor catalogs. A buyer needs

to be analytical, mobile, fl exible,

collaborative and decisive to be

successful for her and for the category

that she represents. She needs to be a

wizard and a fortune teller.

One of the most signifi cant activities

that a buyer performs is the buying

trip. She spends a considerable

amount of time planning for the

next season’s assortment. To enable

this, a buyer has to make numerous

trips to vendor locations, sourcing

agencies, industry events and trade

shows. During these trips, she needs

to shortlist merchandise after an

analysis of sales data, market trends

and vendor catalog. Each product is

evaluated against multiple criteria

before being recommended by the

buyer for further action.

A buyer has been traditionally

and extensively dependent on

spreadsheets. Prior to the buying

trip, she would download all

relevant product information from

the enterprise business intelligence

system. She would then slice and dice

this data on the spreadsheets in a way

that buying decision parameters can

be derived. These will be primarily

based on past sales data, markdowns,

gross margins and current inventory

levels. In addition to these, the

buyer also compiles the purchasing

information that would comprise open

orders, vendor contracts and vendor

performance against contractual

levels.

Along with the spreadsheet

data, the buyer also pulls together

vendor catalog information, market

A buyer needs to be analytical, she has to be responsible for taking care of customer demands data, market trends and finacial budgets

The need of the hour is a rapid platform where retailers can themselves establish a buying trip collaboration process. There are cloud mobile workflow platforms, which can be used towards this requirement

mobile application can be made light

enough to capture information and

refer data that is required on that

buying walk. All information captured

during the walk can be docked into

a buyer’s notebook at the end of the

day. The buyer can append all other

factors, analysis and recommendations

on the notebook application before

uploading that into the enterprise

merchandise systems.

External integration to market feeds

on product and supplier trends and

intelligence can also be a great value

add. These can be annotated to the

visited merchandise from the entire

supplier catalog. Digitisation of the

catalog and its availability on the

mobile device is a refreshing perspective

to today’s buyers. To a large extent, this

eliminates scribbled, highlighted and

dog eared paper catalogs.

Finally, it all comes to collaboration.

The buyer has captured all

relevant information and fi nalised

recommendations. During this process

or subsequent to this, the buyer is

required to liaise with a lot of internal

departments for specialised inputs.

Typically, these interactions would

be with buying colleagues, design

specialists, fi nance, marketing, store,

etc. A buyer seeks opinion and

feedback on the buying selections.

Obviously, this requires a platform

where all interactions can be highly

visible and collaborative.

The need of the hour is a rapid

collaborative platform where retailers

can themselves establish a buying

trip collaboration process and can

be made available in a very short

duration. There are cloud mobile

workfl ow platforms available today,

which can be used towards this

requirement of the industry. Cloud

can signifi cantly reduce IT investment

towards this solution through a pay

per use model; mobile can improve

buyer productivity and workfl ow

can establish rapid collaboration.

Therefore, what the retailer gains

is increased productivity and

collaboration at the lowest cost and in

the shortest time.

Buyers are creative people. A lot

of the activities performed by the

buyer during the buying trip are

non-technical in nature and based

on market experience, intuition and

cordial supplier relationships. The

look and feel and interactivity of the

application should be made based on

a buyer’s persona and liberating the

buyer from the technical nitty-gritties

of traditional IT solutions.

One thing everybody understands

is that buying trips are expensive

and critical. Therefore, it is highly

imperative that these trips have

to be made highly productive and

effective than ever before. Improving

the effectiveness, productivity and

connectivity of a buyer during a

buying trip can make the difference

between goods on the shelf versus

goods in the shopping bag.

intelligence and most importantly

approved fi nancial budgets for each

merchandise category. It is common

to see buyers spending a lot of time to

amalgamate all these data into a larger

spreadsheet. This master spreadsheet

eventually and essentially becomes

the “Buying Trip Bible.”

What we see here is that a buyer’s

responsibility extends beyond the

boundaries of her own organisation.

She has to interact with multiple

stakeholders who are part of the

vendor ecosystem and also personnel

from various other departments of

her own organisation. She operates

in an environment where information

availability and effective collaboration

is critical. Often this aspect of a

buyer’s role is ignored as the focus

is mostly on the functions that take

place within the boundaries of the

retail organisation. There is no better

time to focus on improving the buying

trip productivity than now.

The industry needs tools that

provide information on the move and

also establishes that collaboration

between all stakeholders is the

ammunition that today’s buyers need.

A comprehensive mobility-based

buying trip solution can provide the

buyer ability to capture and collate

all merchandise information into a

buying folio.

A mobile device can itself

function as the agent for capturing

all information while the buyer is

performing the merchandise tours

during the buying trip. The visit

and vendor information once made

available on the mobile application

can then be correlated with the

merchandise catalog. The buyer

can capture images, specifi cations,

notes and calculations on the mobile

device itself. The buyer can also

refer to analytics data both for the

merchandise parameters and pricing

and sales. The analytics view can be

leveraged on the mobile device from

the retailer’s enterprise analytics

systems. Enabling the buying walk

on a mobile device frees up the buyer

from lugging a heavier computing

device through the tradeshow. The

About the author:

Shijo Sunny Thomas is the industry lead

for Retail & CPG at Fujitsu Consulting.

He works closely with retailers in co-

innovation of retail solutions for the store

and the enterprise.