Today's retailers aim to increase profitability by lowering supply chain operating cost and reducing cost per case, while ensuring on shelf availability.

"Improving competitiveness is essential and must be achieved partially by meeting customer demand faster and more accurately," says Managing Director RedPrairie Asia Pacific Mark Skipper.

"Growth is increasingly determined by the successful management of complex global supply chains."   "Cost is impacted by several factors," he explains, "including the facility location, logistics services and fleet utilisation whether the fleet is private or 3PL owned."  

"Product diversity, evolution and seasonality, regular promotions, pricing, regulatory control and compliances all add to the mix of an intricate business environment."  

"In the wake of direct sourcing, supply chains have extended, challenging visibility and adding to the general complexity of operations, while customer service expectations are much greater and product lifecycles shorter," Skipper says.  

"In addition, the future effect of environmental costs for the industry is approaching, and must now be taken in to consideration in relation to both landed prices and total delivered cost."  

In the face of the challenges, Mark Skipper says RedPrairie retail solutions provide an end to end connection to achieve better supply chain efficiency.  

"Our integrated solutions reach from the retail shelf, right through to manufacturing," he says.

"The solution manages labour planning, including HR functions, forecasting of sales and demand, cash reconciliation, ordering, merchandising and promotional management."

"Following through the supply chain, the solutions cover warehousing and transport. Unlike many of our competitors RedPrairie is a supplier that can offer the lot."  

"Labour can be planned hour by hour in retail and supply chain operations ," Skipper says. "This means you can reallocate labour rather than having people idle or unproductive."

"The system also optimises forklifts in the warehouse, so if you're in the receiving dock, the forklift can be instructed to let a pallet down to a pick face instead of coming back empty."  

RedPrairie retail supply chain solutions also enable sales based replenishment in real time from the end consumer and store along with the synchronisation of ordering across the supply chain to eliminate or deduct labour and inventory costs.

"Long term sales based forecasts allow for the negotiation of reduced lead times with suppliers and better prices," he says.  

Skipper proudly points to RedPrairies Store Tasking Solution which is unmatched in the industry. This application manages all the processes of the store.

"It gives tasks to the store manager, assistant manager, cashier, shelf filler; all the different key stakeholders in the store," he says. "If they don't complete a task by a certain time, the system presents a threshold to their manager. Whether it's stock loss prevention, customer safety, merchandising, security, the application makes sure streamlined tasks are being completed across the whole chain."  

"Advanced distribution processes are facilitated through warehouse automation, Voice systems, RFID and transportation optimisation including transport collaboration."  

Overall Skipper maintains that RedPraire solutions allow substantially more visibility of information and management control.  

"In order to succeed in a demand-driven retail supply network, management must be able to act in real time to detect and resolve issues and measure and improve performance," he says.  

"Visibility is a major issue, whether it's knowing where your containers are or where the truck is that's delivering to a store or warehouse. Communications devices such as GPRS contribute to this process, however systems need to be accurate. Fleet plans created by the software manage  the drops and driver brakes undertaken."

"These days, trucks must arrive at a specific Dock number  at the DC within the hour window designated by the retailer or fines may arise."  

Skipper says one of the key retail aims today is the ability to support different replenishment methods across the multi-tiered distribution network.

"An accurate demand and promotional demand forecast is more critical than ever," he says.   "According to AMR research, companies that are the best at demand forecasting average 15% less inventory; 17% stronger perfect order fulfillment; 35% shorter cash-to-cash cycle times."  

"To have consistency in products on shelf availability the demand forecast at store level is essential. Good product visibility and accurate inventory at the stores can have a dramatic effect on its customer responsiveness.

"In addition, people need security around a supply chain because a recall is very expensive," Skipper adds. "A recall at a major grocer might cost the supplier $80,000 plus the cost of writing off the stock and any other related costs. If you're a small supplier, it could wipe you out.

So RedPrairie systems track the lot and batch, to know where it's all gone. Then, if there is a recall the supplier can get straight on to it."  

"In the same way that Australian cattle has RFID tags which provide information about where it was born, what its parentage was, which abattoir it went to, who handled it, what it was fed, what injections it's had, and so on, the RedPriarie system knows who picked each order, and exactly where each individual component went through the supply chain.  

 "We aim to foster a proactive rather than reactive approach to managing operations," Skipper says. "The software utilises much less paper, while increasing a user's trust in the accuracy of the data."  

"The system also provides the ability to measure what you manage, which opens the way for great improvements in order picking/replenishment and support for varying and changing customer requirements."  

Mark Skipper argues that as the Retail supply chain model continues to change from 'push' to 'pull', collaboration with vendors or suppliers and the improvement of current procurement practices is a must.  

"The lack of collaborative forecasting and co-ordinated order cycle management is creating excessive safety stock and reducing productivity at the DC," he says.

 "The lack of collaborative transport planning is also increasing transport costs. Demand-supply synchronisation, joint inventory management and forecast sharing is part of supply chain best practice. Applications that promote supplier or contract manufacturing collaboration are one of the top investment areas."  

In line with key retail aims in relation to consistent product on shelf availability, Mark Skipper says RedPriarie retail applications will continue to focus on the aggregation of replenishment plans that encompass promotional and seasonal forecasts and picking in a store friendly format to reduce the time it takes to stock shelves.

"Applications that integrate plans at store, DC and vendor levels to generate transport requirements will also continue to be developed furthering RedPrairie's dominance in offering full visibility of activities across the supply chain network."