Beyond quick wins: Retail’s new era of time-driven efficiency
Have we ever faced stronger cost headwinds? Labour costs are pushing higher with regular increases in the national living wage and changes to employers’ National Insurance contributions creating high costs per employee and pulling in additional part timers who were exempt before. Retailers are working hard to get more bang for every labour buck spent and it’s making a difference. ReThink’s efficiency index benchmark is increasing across retail as businesses introduce time saving tech, reduce down time and streamline their processes.
Retailers are continuing to make efficiency gains, despite delivering years of ongoing cost reductions already. Gone are the days of widespread, easy quick wins. Retailers need to be smarter in identifying the productivity opportunities within their operation.
Tech innovation and uptake scale is bringing down the cost of initially expensive IT solutions. Self-check outs have become ubiquitous and electronic shelf-edge labels are taking off and can be seen in a high street shop near you now. This technology has already delivered millions of pounds of labour saving across our industry, with more still to be unlocked, often freeing up instore colleagues to do more of what customers value.
Many retailers are using time and motion study techniques to unlock the time saving opportunities from processes that can be harder to spot. Moving from a dusty image of men with stop watches, modern workstudy techniques can identify process stages ripe for re-engineering, quantify down time so resources can be deployed to drive more business benefit and help make sure tech is implemented the best way, so the business case is delivered. If a human is involved in a process, there is a measurement technique that’s perfect to measure and optimise time taken.
Never Miss a Retail Update!Case studies of completed studies often highlight processes that businesses hang on to from the past that are not serving them now. For example, a retailer had struggled with on-shelf availability and developed robust processes to count and check frequently to get them back on track. They no longer have inventory issues yet retain the overly time-consuming routine counting when switching to exception-based checking would be a more efficient and equally effective platform for where they are now. Similarly, a historic bout of colleague theft issues led a retailer to complete a full till count every time a colleague switched on or off a till. Introducing outturn issue trigger levels meant till count frequency could be reduced and manager time was freed up for more value adding activity.
Retailers are increasingly looking to time and motion studies to help them right size their store and field leadership teams and maximise their focus where they make the biggest difference. Measurement of team leaders spending 80% of their time on tasks that generalist roles can complete for a lower hourly rate is driving a reduction in the number of organisational layers. ReThink has seen leadership time for managers moving from an average of 20% to closer to 50% as retailers have rationalised structures and focus managers on leading their teams to drive performance.
How do we see store operations changing? We’re expecting an ongoing drive for productivity gains. Once the easy wins are realised, it requires a deeper dive into how time is spent to identify the next wave of productivity improvements – modern time and motion study can really help.
To find out more visit ReThink online or connect with Simon here.
