Retail News South Africa

Workshops to lower retail costs

In a recent presentation to the Efficient Consumer Response conference in South Africa, it was indicated that costs in the retail / CPG industry could be dramatically lowered by up to 4% of sales - by implementing cost reduction programmes similar to those successfully run in Europe and America.

To help provide the capability to support these initiatives and deliver savings, software solutions company CoreProcess, in conjunction with ECR (Efficient Consumer Response SA), will be holding a series of workshops.

The workshops are aimed at showing how to unlock cost savings through re-engineering value chain activity and supporting collaboration. The workshops, which will take place in October, will be held in the Western Cape, Kwazulu Natal, Gauteng and the Free State.

With the present situation of rapidly rising costs due to factors such as above inflation oil price hikes, increasing transport costs, wage increases and increasing retail competition, the workshops will present a practical results orientated introduction to the industry best practise in cost analysis, reduction and management. Based on the highly successful European ECR best practises and using a new industry cost model specific to SA conditions.

The workshops will be run by three experienced ECR / Logistics practitioners, Nick Gazzard, CTO of CoreProcess International plc., Verena Illingworth and Francois van Schalkwyk, who will present the methodology & relevant tools in combination with case studies explaining how Europe, America and South African companies have used new techniques and technology to dramatically cut their cost to serve through optimisation of their supply chain, sometimes by as much as 20%.

The workshops are limited to 10 people per workshop and bookings can be made with Lee Halliday on +27-21- 447 6445 or

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