The Importance of a Solid Quality Assurance Effort for a Successful Project
The most exciting thing about a systems project is what’s new. Is it an entirely new functionality that will take the organization into the next decade? Is it replacing antiquated programs that barely work anymore? Is it simply tying together two systems that are fine alone, but will be amazing in concert? These are the
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Disaster Recovery Plan Testing Before a Catastrophe Occurs
You never know when disaster will strike. It could be malicious ransomware, a natural catastrophe, hardware failure, intentional sabotage or human error. No data center or IT infrastructure is immune to potential disaster. Revenue, customer satisfaction and employee operations are all dramatically affected. What’s even more alarming is that nearly half the companies that lose
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Ensuring Project Success
Every project is an opportunity for success. No organization starts a system integration or upgrade with the goal of failure. But there are a few things you can do to improve your chances for achieving your goals with as little drama as possible. Some of these ideas may seem obvious, but it’s still valuable to
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Mapping Out a Retail IT Strategy
All retailers need to have a long-term information technology strategy. The need to create a faster, agile and profitable enterprise is more important now than ever before. One of the most effective building blocks for achieving this critical strategy is a multi-year IT plan. This type of detailed, enterprise-wide roadmap is essential to getting the
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Cross‒Channel Integration ‒ Is the 21st Century Retailer Fully Integrated?
Many of today’s retailers are focusing on winning customers by communicating and delivering their company’s unique value proposition. In order to provide the capacity to shop anytime, anyplace, and from anywhere, retailers need to provide their customers the ability to transact from any one channel and fulfill (or return) in another channel. In order to
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10 Key Steps for Project Success
Projects represent a company’s attempt to establish competitive advantage and profit improvement. Successful projects separate companies from those struggling to compete. Use these ten steps as a guideline to ensure project success and take your company to new heights. Learn more about RPE’s retail consulting services. Download PDF 1. Set Expectations: Define the Project Too often,
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Opportunities for Supply Chain Optimization: Common Scenarios for Softlines/Fashion Retailers
There are two key components in analysis of Retail Planning Methodology. One is the type of Planning tools used. The second is whether or not the tool is used in the appropriate place in the supply chain, at the appropriate level and is interfaced correctly to other tools and functions. Generally, the typical types of
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Documentation ‒ Maximize Team Effectiveness and Extend the Investment
Too often documentation is missing from the deliverables of major change initiatives. With continuing pressures to shorten project timelines and increase profits – project teams, software vendors and business leaders regularly modify or eliminate the effort spent on documentation to reduce time and expense for the overall project. When documentation has been created for a
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Item Transitions: Maximize Profits from New and Exiting Items
Item transitions refer to those periods of activities when the retailer executes the addition of new items and removal of exiting items from a product mix. Adding new items to a retailer’s on-shelf assortment offers a chance to increase sales and gross margin. Removing items from an assortment will ultimately eliminate unproductive inventory by sell-off
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Distribution and Inventory Strategy Effectiveness
The goal of an inventory strategy is to minimize overall inventory costs such as transportation, distribution and inventory carrying, and to maximize revenue for a given service level. The ability to reach an optimal point of both revenue and inventory is dependent upon four basic—but dynamic and interdependent—elements: supply quantity, supply timing, demand quantity and
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