Workforce Management: Operational Excellence in Retail
In any industry, operational excellence revolves around several key business outcomes, including productivity, cost control, and quality of service. Retail is no exception. For retailers, all these outcomes are highly, if not entirely, dependent on the quality of the workforce and how it is managed. In fact, in a recent survey and benchmark report on the retail workforce by Retail Systems Research, when asked about the “role our workforce plays in enabling customer service,” 78 percent of respondents replied that it has increased over the past three years. Yet for many retailers, workforce management remains a manual and decentralized process that limits the quality and consistency of customer service and hinders organizational visibility and control of labor costs and compliance.
Operational challenges can vary across retail segments and store formats. Where SMB retailers may need to focus on process automation, big-box retailers will get more value from workforce optimization, and specialty retailers from increasing standardization, visibility, and control. Irrespective of store format, effective workforce management provides many opportunities for retailers to drive operational excellence.
