In sales & after-sales there is one common way to increase sales being applied all over the world and across all industries. This is often referred to as “The law of large numbers”. It states that in order to increase sales the most effective method is to increase sales activities throughout the sales process. This might in fact result in more sales, but gives little or no attention to how efficient the processes are.
S&OP is gaining attention among organizations eager to implement powerful tactical management processes to help them succeed while navigating a rapidly changing business landscape. Short for Sales and Operations Planning, S&OP is an integrated business management process that aligns all facets of an organization to their key market goals, synchronizing them and allowing the organization to react with agility to changes in the market. Through S&OP, the executive/leadership team achieves continuous focus and alignment among all functions of the organization, increasing flexibility and responsiveness.
Traditionally, the retail industry has been focusing on early technology adoption as a major driver to improve its bottom line. In the 1980s, unique packaging codes/barcodes together with point-of-sale systems were implemented to boost efficiency and accuracy. In the 1990s more complex planning tools for forecasting, merchandising, smart warehousing/distribution and pricing were introduced to retail operations. And finally, in the 2000s, cross channel integration, ERP platforms, online stores, and pricing/markdown tools were implemented. Still missing, until now, are major improvements/investments in inventory management processes between central warehouse/depots to retail stores/outlets and within retail stores (in-house logistics) themselves. While RFID technology and item-level inventory management systems are considered to be technologies to once again drive retailers’ bottom line, we at Four Principles believe that these technologies, as with any other technology, deliver their full potential only when implemented in combination with a continuous improvement process following and adopting Lean principles (technology follows process - and not the other way round).
In general terms, a route-to-market (RTM) is the way a company brings the right products, to the right point of sales, at the right time. The RTM is the pipeline through which the company flows goods in one direction (supplier to customer), and the payments generated by them in the opposite direction(customer to supplier). In simple terms, a company could have the best product or service in the world, but it will fail if the company does not put the product or service in front of the right customers.