There are big changes in the air for retailers, says Nick Gazzard, CEO of CoreProcess International, the business process software company operating in South Africa, UK, and Scandanavia and soon in Australia. He was speaking at the recent ECR (Efficient Consumer Response) conference in Johannesburg.
Gazzard stated that retailers are increasingly moving to centralise distribution therefore being able to sell their products at competitive prices to get closer to customers.
In some instances retailers are persuading suppliers to pay towards the costs of doing this in the form of distribution allowances. Some retailers want to take possession of product earlier and in some cases they collect product direct from the factory when their empty delivery trucks are passing by and as a consequence they want to be compensated for this.
He goes on to say that everyone in the supply chain is trying to become efficient and lower costs, but the technology is complex and business processes need to change.
Gazzard says that one of the issues is that while ERP systems are great for tying business systems together; warehouse management, marketing and other systems, often operate in isolation. Often these systems cannot or don't talk to each other and if they do it is another matter to get the business processes and people to communicate for the overall good of the business and the supply chain.
CoreProcess is working with Somerfield, one of the top five supermarket chains in the UK with revenue in excess of £5 billion, to implement business process management techniques for managing product inventory that goes out of date quickly.
CoreProcess has developed a system that analyses where stock is located, in which warehouses and how current it is. This has reduced their stock wastages from £7m to £3m.
Gazzard concluded by saying that their CoreProcess-built, web based system, ties together critical processes relating to products, people, stores and locations.
