Newsletters Retail Supply Chain, Sourcing and Product Life-Cycle Management Strategies
Retailers around the world now realize that sustainable competitive advantage will be gained only by those companies that integrate a deep understanding of consumer demand directly into their supply chain planning and execution workflows. Making the business case for continued retail enterprise technology and process improvements is essential to stay ahead of omnichannel consumer shopping needs. By enabling the most trustworthy, efficient, and effective processes, retailers can achieve higher service levels while reducing costs, thereby growing customer loyalty and brand strength. IDC Retail Insights' Retail Supply Chain, Sourcing, and Product Life-Cycle Management Strategies service examines the impact of technology investments and process initiatives on the performance of enterprise retail systems that enable better planning and execution from supplier to shelf. Specific coverage is given to the drivers, benefits, processes, and applications related to a visible, efficient, and intelligent supply chain.
Approach
This service collects relevant market data through in-depth interviews with industry experts, retail staff, and technology vendors, complemented by secondary research from conferences, publications, and third-party news sources. IDC Retail Insights' analysts develop unique and comprehensive analyses of this data, focused on providing actionable recommendations. To ensure relevance, our analysts work with subscribers to identify and prioritize specific topics to be covered in research reports.
Topics Addressed
Throughout the year, this service will address the following topics:
- Critical IT and process components of the retail supply chain
- Global sourcing and product life-cycle management
- Logistics systems (warehouse and transportation), supply planning (replenishment), and supply network visibility and management (including global trade and carrier management)
- Workforce management
- RFID and traceability
- Sustainability
Key Questions Answered
Our research addresses the following issues that are critical to your success:
- What are the challenges in extending retail business globally?
- What will be the most cost-effective approaches to ensuring flexibility in global supplier management?
- How will retail supply chains adapt to consumer-centric and omnichannel business models?
- How can retailers lower their inventory expense while improving in-stock conditions and overall service levels?
- How can retailers operate more efficiently and effectively?
- What steps should be taken to align supply planning with global logistics?
- What critical steps must be followed to ensure successful delivery of quality value-driven private label assortments?
Who Should Subscribe
The Retail Supply Chain, Sourcing, and Product Life-Cycle Management Strategies service is ideally suited to support the needs of senior supply chain, product development, corporate brand, and retail IT executives responsible for ensuring successful delivery of products from concept or source to shelf. Suppliers to the retail industry focused on enterprise supply chain or product life-cycle management applications will also benefit from this service.
Return on Research Investment
Core Benefits:
- Detailed models of evaluation criteria and deployment models for supply chain and product life-cycle management systems
- Quantitative assessments of supply chain applications' impacts on business success
- Guidance on project implementation strategies
- Rapid updates of competitive vendor landscape and product road map maturity models
Standard Subscription Deliverables
IDC Retail Insights values building client relationships and strives to foster a partnership with each client through continuous analyst interaction; timely delivery of current, concise, and relevant research; as well as custom research when needed. Each advisory service delivers strategic research covering business and technology issues. A summary of the basic service deliverables available to subscribers includes the following:
- Analyst inquiry time specific to the advisory service area
- 24 x 7 research access via www.idc-ri.com
- Discounted admission to specific IDC Retail Insights or IDC conferences
- Complimentary forum invitations (Web conferences, industry briefings)
Join Our Community
Our IDC Insights Community is designed to enable technology buyers to engage with our industry analysts, share knowledge and best practices, and connect with colleagues. To participate in our community, members create a profile to:
- Participate in our discussions in our blogs, forums, and polls
- Learn about and share best practices, tips, tricks, and tools related to business/technology alignment
- Network with colleagues and join groups within each industry
- Provide feedback to IDC's industry analysts and hear what we're up to
Visit us at: http://idc-insights-community.com and join our conversations.
Related Offerings
Related offerings to our industry-specific research practices include IT Spending Guides — segmented regional and country-level analysis by solution area; Go-to-Market Services (GMS) — a modular set of deliverables to assist clients in extending their market reach, validating their market strategy, and producing more responsive customer-centric marketing campaigns; and IDC Advisory Tools — a growing set of solutions designed to ensure clients that technology purchasing and deployment decisions are optimized. In addition, IDC Retail Insights experts are available for individualized consulting engagements to address specific challenges or to customize the results of our syndicated research offerings.
