Retail

Store Operations (P&L)

The retail business is fiercely competitive. Retailers must satisfy customers through multiple channels, and deal with industry consolidations, increasing profit targets, and shrinking margins. In this setting, the planning process needs to be collaborative and extend beyond finance to all stakeholders. It must offer value to both executive and operations management to ensure participation and buy-in across the organization.

Apply best practices technology to improve store operations performancee

The IBM Cognos Store Operations Planning Performance Blueprint uses IBM Cognos 8 Planning and IBM Cognos 8 BI to provide a Web-based process for managing store operations:

• Manage store attributes and implement standards for key controllable expenses.
• Automatically calculate expenses based on revenue and company costs.
• Assess store-level impact of local initiatives such as advertising and promotions.
• Automatically pro-rate revenue, margins, or costs to simplify planning and identify impact on key metrics.
• Conduct headcount position-level planning based on store profiles and baseline standards.
• Model financial impact of business decisions for multiple scenarios.
• Measure key revenue, margin, and expense performance indicators for operations by division, region, department, or account.
• Track flash sales and labor metrics using dashboards and scorecards.
• Analyze and report onsales, labor, and store initiatives to determine key insights such as who are the top and bottom performers.

Learn more about the IBM Cognos Store Operations Planning Performance Blueprint. Download the following:

• Store Operations and Development Issue Paper
• Store Operations Application Brief
• Store Operations Demo

Additional Resources:

Retail Performance Management: Increase Visibility and Drive Profitable Growth

White Paper

Learn about the benefits of using Cognos performance management to gain deep business insight, improve decision-making, and succeed in the highly competitive retail marketplace.

Retail Perspectives: Maximize the Return on Customer

Article

Three perspectives on the retail industry. Learn how customer data drives more successful campaigns, why retailers need tighter integration with their supply chains, and how the IBM Cognos Financial Merchandise Planning Performance Blueprint can improve inventory planning.

Selecting the Right Retail Planning Solution

White Paper

This software selection guide provides some key factors to consider when evaluating enterprise planning solutions, and it makes the business case for Cognos as the best-in-class performance management system provider.

IBM Cognos Retail Store Development Planning Performance Blueprint

Online Demo

Learn how Cognos retail performance management solutions can help chains align corporate objectives with operating plans to operate more profitably and efficiently.

Retail Performance Management Podcast with JCB Partners

Podcast

An interview with Brad Smith of JCB partners. Includes a survey of current trends in the retail industry and how JCB and Cognos partner to provide a retail performance management solution to improve performance in merchandising, pricing, and other key areas and walks through a typical retail performance management engagement.

IBM Cognos Financial Merchandise Planning Blueprint: Align Merchandise Plans with Corporate Strategies, Customer Demands

Issue Paper

Learn how retail chains can meet sales objectives and profitability goals through a merchandise planning process that is synchronized with both finance and operations.

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