How Retailers can Cope with Slowing Growth

In  Knowledge@Wharton,  Non -Technical, but quite strategic these days.  Recall talking to Marshall Fisher while in the enterprise.   (See his book)

How Retailers can Cope with Slowing Growth

Wharton's Marshall Fisher discusses why retailers must break their 'addiction' to top-line growth.

Podcast:

"... Successful retailers can grow quickly in their early years simply by opening new stores. But eventually they run out of real estate, and then they need the discipline to stop opening new stores and focus instead on driving more sales through their existing stores. They can boost sales and profits dramatically by making changes in the way they run their existing stores, such as with help from analytics and the use of technology.

In fact, several such small changes brought in profits that helped 17 retailers outperform the stock performance of the S&P 500 index, according to a new study titled “Curing the Addiction to Growth” published in the Harvard Business Review by Marshall Fisher, Wharton professor of operations, information and decisions, along with his co-authors, Vishal Gaur (who has a PhD from the Wharton School and now is a professor at Cornell’s Johnson School) and Herb Kleinberger (who has an MBA from Wharton and for many years led PWC’s retail practice).    .... " 

AI in the Everyday Enterprise

Always interested in how AI will be inserted into the enterprise.  We made early, simplistic attempts that were highly focused, very successful at times, but not integrated into common tasks.  How will this change in the near future?   Clear need is to integrate with corporate data and knowledge structure.   Make the system easy to maintain.   Related CWorld Opinion:

From presentation to conversation: How A.I. will transform enterprise apps  Apps will soon shift from dumb repositories to deft assistants. .... 

" .... In the second stage, A.I. identifies valuable tasks and pushes notifications to users suggesting they take action. For a recent example, a medical benefits management company had A.I. evaluate claims before any human intervention, approving those that were clearly appropriate. The tricky claims are pushed to nurses and doctors for further review. With apologies to Marshall McLuhan, at this stage the message is the medium, not the app’s presentation layer.

Whether it’s email or a rich messaging platform like Slack, the notification serves as a gateway deep into the presentation layer of the app that generated it. A churn alert links directly to the affected customer -- you no longer navigate down to that user from the app’s landing page. And recipients can even directly take action within the message itself as part of micro flow. The app is still the system of record, but its presentation layer is no longer the entry point for many user tasks. .... " 

Anticipating Value of Analytic Oracles and Advisors

In ClickZ:  Thoughts on analytics advisory and automating functions:

" ... Could the "Analytics Oracle" Be the Next Evolution of Convergence Analytics?  ... A new ascendance of smart platforms that clean and converge data sets, while also answering questions, could change the convergence analytics landscape as we know it. ... "   by Marshall Sponder .  ... " 

Mentions of Watson Analytics and a to be announced Salesforce 'Analytics Cloud'.   Where does the advisory action end and the business decision depth begin?   Key element of how such systems will be used.

New Science of Retailing

Wharton Prof Marshall Fisher discusses his recently published book:  The New Science of Retailing.  I have read the book, and have reviewed and mentioned it in this blog a number of times, highly recommended.  Here he emphasises the key issue of what data is required to make decisions.   This post nicely summarizes what I worked on for most of my early career.

" ... In today's economy, retailers are hard pressed to increase revenues. Among the biggest challenges they face is matching supply with demand. In The New Science of Retailing: How Analytics Are Transforming the Supply Chain and Improving Performance, Wharton professor Marshall Fisher and co-author Ananth Raman argue that retailers have the data they need to manage supply chains more efficiently and increase sales and profits. Knowledge@Wharton spoke with Fisher about what types of data are most important for retailers to collect, how they can use this information to identify home-run products and why the retailing industry might be missing as much as one-third of potential sales ... "

New Science of Retailing: Assortment Planning

Today at UC,  Heard Marshall Fisher talk about work in chapter 2 of his book: The New Science of Retailing: How Analytics are Transforming the Supply Chain and Improving Performance which covers assortment planning.

In the book he covers such diverse product assortments as snack cakes and tire sales.   He positions the  technique as using modeling, estimation and optimization. And of course data gathering.  I would emphasize that there is much of that to do in any analytics project, making sure that the data is clean and gathered under similar the same environmental context.  He also covers what kinds of problems can be solved using this approach.  The optimization he uses is a simple greedy algorithm, implemented by sorting.  In the case of the tire sales, the approach yielded a 6 percent revenue increase.  Impressive results for a relatively simple approach. 

He positions this as Mining Sales Data to Discover 'Home Run'  Products You are Missing.

Overall I found this book to be an excellent outline-style introduction to the use of analytics in the supply chain.

I have heard Marshall Fisher talk several times and have been impressed by the well positioned and yet practical analytics approaches he demonstrates. Worth taking a further look at. See also his Wharton site.

The Retailer: Supply Chain's Last Mile: Workshop May 6

Update: Confirmed Speakers -

Brett Bonner, Director, Research & Development, Kroger Co.
Roger Dattilo, Vice President of Inventory Management for Customer Fulfillment Centers, OfficeMax
Dr. Marshall Fisher, UPS Professor, Professor of Operations and Information Management, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Paris Gogos, Director, The Nielsen Co.
Alex Hase, Vice President of Sales at Retail Solutions
Brian Kirkpatrick, Director North America Product Supply,  Go To Market Operations, P&G
Bob Wilson, Executive Vice President - Business Development & Marketing


Reminder: The event is free, but you MUST preregister to attend. Please RSVP to tricia.burger@uc.edu to preregister.

The Department of Operations & Business Analytics at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Business is pleased to announce its Seventh Annual Workshop on Hot Topics in Supply Chain Analytics, Practice and Technology. This year’s workshop is entitled, “The Retailer: Supply Chain’s Last Mile.”

There continues to be significant challenges and opportunities in managing today’s retail supply chains. This year’s workshop will focus on the interactions between the retailer and upstream members of the supply chain. Retailers are drowning in data but are having a difficult time developing actionable insights.

Join us to hear experts discuss the importance of information and analytics in improving retail performance: forecast accuracy, inventory turns (while reducing out of stocks), assortment planning and pricing optimization. Industry leaders from P&G, Kroger and OfficeMax as well as information providers, such as The Nielsen Co., Market6 and Retail Solutions Inc., will join faculty experts from the University of Cincinnati and the Wharton School (Marshall Fisher, PhD) to discuss the new science of retailing.

The event will be held May 6, 2011, 10AM - 3:30PM with a short reception to follow at the University of Cincinnati’s Carl H. Lindner Hall in Cincinnati, OH. Seats are limited and registration is required. There is no registration fee. Attendees who preregister as of April 29, 2011, will receive the 2010 book The New Science of Retailing: How Analytics are Transforming the Supply Chain and Improving Performance by Marshall Fisher and Ananth Raman.

To register, please contact Tricia Burger, tricia.burger@uc.edu, (513) 556-7140.
 To learn more or for suggested lodging accommodations, please visit http://www.business.uc.edu/SupplyChain/events .

mike.fry@uc.edu
(513) 556 0404
http://www.business.uc.edu/Mike-Fry

The Retailer: Supply Chain's Last Mile

Upcoming, I plan to attend:

The Department of Operations & Business Analytics at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Business is pleased to announce its Seventh Annual Workshop on Hot Topics in Supply Chain Analytics, Practice and Technology. This year’s workshop is entitled, “The Retailer: Supply Chain’s Last Mile.” There continues to be significant challenges and opportunities in managing today’s retail supply chains. This year’s workshop will focus on the interactions between the retailer and upstream members of the supply chain. Retailers are drowning in data but are having a difficult time developing actionable insights.

Join us to hear experts discuss the importance of information and analytics in improving retail performance: forecast accuracy, inventory turns (while reducing out of stocks), assortment planning and pricing optimization. Industry leaders from P&G, Kroger and OfficeMax as well as information providers, such as The Nielsen Co., Market6 and Retail Solutions Inc., will join faculty experts from the University of Cincinnati and the Wharton School (Marshall Fisher, PhD) to discuss the new science of retailing.

The event will be held May 6, 2011, 10AM - 3:30PM at the University of Cincinnati’s Carl H. Lindner Hall in Cincinnati, OH. Seats are limited and registration is required. There is no registration fee. Pre-registrants, as of April 29, 2011, will receive the 2010 book “The New Science of Retailing: How Analytics are Transforming the Supply Chain and Improving Performance” by Marshall Fisher and Ananth Raman.

To register, please contact Tricia Burger, tricia.burger@uc.edu, (513) 556-7140.

To learn more or for suggested lodging accommodations, please visit http://www.business.uc.edu/SupplyChain/events .
____________________________________

Via Uday S. Rao, Associate Professor, Operations and Business Analytics, Email: raous@ucmail.uc.edu
http://www.business.uc.edu/Uday-Rao

A Mathematics of Cooperation

An interview in New Scientist about the quantitative logic of success:    " ... Martin Nowak has concluded that an ability to cooperate is the secret of humanity's success. He talks to Michael Marshall about drawing fire from Richard Dawkins, the perils of punishment, and devising the mathematical equivalent of the rules of religion ... "

New Science of Retailing: Flexible Supply Chains

In the midst of reading: The New Science of Retailing: How Analytics are Transforming the Supply Chain and Improving Performance by Marshall Fisher and Ananth Raman.

I am currently reading the section on Flexible Supply Chains: How to Design for Greater Agility End to End , which deals with the inherent inaccuracy of the demand forecast and how the ability to respond quickly to unexpected changes in demand can have a large impact on profitability.The book studies a number of cases of flexibility in meeting demand.  I was particularly struck by the statement that often the trust needed for supply chain flexibility may be missing.  Very true.  In a following chapter on goal alignment It is pointed out that incentives are often misaligned and can create problems for supply chain implementation and operation. 

Overall I found this book to be an excellent outline-style introduction to the use of analytics in the supply chain. Solving your particular problem will require much data gathering and analysis.

I have heard Marshall Fisher talk several times and have been impressed by the well positioned and yet practical analytics approaches he demonstrates. Worth taking a further look at. See also his Wharton site.

New Science of Retailing

A book I had missed when it came out earlier this year: The New Science of Retailing: How Analytics are Transforming the Supply Chain and Improving Performance by Marshall Fisher and Ananth Raman. Discovered in a review in the HBR. Note to publisher: Send a review copy and I will publish a more detailed review.

I have heard Marshall Fisher talk several times and have been impressed by the well positioned and yet practical analytics approaches he demonstrates. Worth taking a further look at. See also his Wharton site.

Variable Sun

In an earlier academic life experience I did sun modeling. This field has made considerable strides over the years. I am no longer involved with the technologies at play, but it is clear that the models used do not predict. It has always been known that the sun, as all stars, is variable to some degree. We are getting more information now about how much. More on our most recent learning:

" ... SUNSPOTS come and go, but recently they have mostly gone. For centuries, astronomers have recorded when these dark blemishes on the solar surface emerge, only for them to fade away again after a few days, weeks or months. Thanks to their efforts, we know that sunspot numbers ebb and flow in cycles lasting about 11 years.

But for the past two years, the sunspots have mostly been missing. Their absence, the most prolonged for nearly a hundred years, has taken even seasoned sun watchers by surprise. "This is solar behaviour we haven't seen in living memory," says David Hathaway, a physicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.... "