Axteam: Operations Diagnostic Program for Retail

2022: Development of an operations diagnostic program for retail

The Russian company, which was previously part of the global Accenture network, developed a program for diagnosing operations for retail and announced this on June 6, 2022. The service of the ex-Accenture team will help retailers reduce costs by optimizing the workspace, implementing standards, developing understandable visual instructions for employees and other initiatives.

According to the company's specialists, optimization helps to add from 3% to 20% to the productivity of stores and increase revenue by 1-2%. Accenture's experience in implementing initiatives reduces between 9% and 10% of work across a chain of stores. Customer satisfaction is increased by 2-5% due to the availability of the desired product on the shelf. According to Accenture experts (the company was transferred to the Russian leadership), the total effect for the retail chain can reach 1% of sales - for example, for the average network from several hundred to a thousand stores, this is up to 1.5 billion rubles a year.

Russian retail chains are not going through a difficult moment. Due to inflation, the purchasing power of the population is decreasing: according to Romir, in April 2022, the average check in stores fell immediately by 6.1% compared to March. Procurement prices are increasing, logistics costs are growing, and technological development is complicated by the departure of foreign vendors. These processes dictate to retailers the need to reduce costs in all key operations, "said Alexey Sidorov, head of retail consulting at Accenture (the company was transferred to the Russian leadership).

Diagnosis of retail chains helps identify issues such as unbalanced provisioning, mischaracterized workspaces, hardware and workspace difficulties, incorrect schedules, frequent prioritization, and so on.

Within the framework of the project, interviews with employees, observations of operations, analysis of the rhythm of the day of the store and KPI, assessment of the utilization of working time and productivity of employees and other types of measurements are carried out. For diagnostics, from 1 to 8 outlets are selected, the process takes from 3 to 7 weeks. The survey may include all major store operations as well as operations for only certain categories of goods, such as perishable goods, or store areas, such as warehouse or trading floor only.

The purpose of diagnosing operations is to develop a number of specific initiatives to improve store performance. For example, your company may need to reduce the excess number of touches on an item or synchronize the replenishment schedule with other activities, such as accepting or replacing price tags. A common problem is often changing priorities, when sellers switch from one unfinished task to another during the working day. Finding and solving these problems, federal and regional retail chains can significantly increase the efficiency of operating activities, "said Timur Shayakhmedov, retail consulting manager at Accenture.