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Retail Strategic Application Map – An overview of the different types of retail applications

Retail is a broad industry, covering many different business methodologies. To make sense of these differences we define a retail strategic applications map which divides retail into two broad camps: -

  1. Apparel, hard lines and electronics. These sectors are characterised by their dependency on good planning and analysis. Apparel especially is a fast-moving business with a huge dependency on the retailer securing the right products, getting them to the right stores and charging the right price. Ranges are changing all the time and the retailer takes a huge responsibility for the product mix, pricing, promotion and mark down policies applied.
  2. Consumer Packaged Goods (or FMCG). Although this is also a fast moving business, with many seasonal lines, responsibility over the range, pricing and promotions policies is more equally shared between the retailer and the manufacturer. In some categories of CPG, such as soft drinks, the retailer takes almost no part in deciding which products appear on the shelves and how they are to be promoted.

It is also necessary to slice retail business intelligence across another axis, and that is by planning versus analysis: -

  1. Planning applications. Retail puts a huge emphasis on planning and forecasting, and planning is an interactive activity. Retailers do not attempt to plan at the lowest level of their business. Typically they plan by category or subcategory of merchandise, very occasionally going down to style or line level, one level above SKU.
  2. Analysis applications. Retail does depend on having data in the analysis application at the SKU by store by week level, and occasionally by day as well, and consolidating to give a picture by product category or by grouping of stores.

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