The Retailer Spring Edition 2023

SPRING 2023

43

Process Efficiency If there’s one thing that can counteract a strong financial plan, it’s an ill-structured set of processes. Process inefficiencies can range anywhere from the invoicing flow, to the scope of work clarity, to ordering blips, to marketing agency revision rounds and beyond. Even if the price per item/service isn’t affected, the re-engineering of broken or vague internal processes significantly improves spend (i.e. incorporating Green IT practices to reduce waste). Let’s look at the spend category of marketing, an excellent and common example of the impact of process improvement. Even if rates are optimal, rounds of revision can cause your costs to skyrocket. Improving the briefing and review processes can therefore significantly lower your overall costs. In market research, it is frequently the case that a retail organization works with innumerable market research firms and shopper marketing service providers. There may be overlapping services, custom scopes of work for every project, and a significant amount of negotiating, con tracting hours, and process inefficiency that is not easily visible until we look at things with a category-wide lens. the category manager wielding it.” ‘‘ A category strategy is only as beneficial as

Supplier Relationship Management One of the most under-utilized sources of cost reduction comes from suppliers themselves. Consider that your supply partners work closely with your company daily and are exposed to the details around your programs and processes. Additionally, especially in GFNR, “non-core” areas of spend, these suppliers may work with one or several of your direct competitors and therefore have a birds-eye view into best practices across organizations. This position gives them a unique perspective on how your business operates and what can be optimized. Too often, procurement organizations prioritize relationships with “core strategic suppliers”—third parties most closely related to the company’s product or service—and so the voices of other supporting providers go unheard. Fortunately, this is an easy dilemma to solve. Not only do suppliers want to share their perspectives, but in many cases the changes they recommend will make the relationship and ways of working better for them as well. The power of partnership is real. A partner workshop to prioritize inno vation opportunities can yield countless ideas for future benefits. For example, an IT partner can be an exceptional source of risk management strategies, which can help to maintain brand reputation and data protec tion, and avoid untold costs. Set up a regular cadence of peer-to-peer sharing with your suppliers, and you will reap exponential rewards in the long term.

Manish Vora manish.vora@wns.com www.wns.com +1(347) 821 9326