Many high-level industry leaders ask, “How can I scale my retail business?”
For digital native retailers, scaling up typically comes in the form of expansion from an online store, the physical pop-up shops, before going into a full retail location. For e-tailers, the challenge of scaling involves understanding the differences inventory needed for a physical location versus an online location; typically your product mix will be smaller or more selective, especially since your pop-up shops generally won’t have a lot of floor space.
For brick-and-mortar retailers, scaling up typically means expanding from one store too many. Challenges for retailers here center around determining the right product mix for their different stores, while considering factors such as location and physical size of the stores.
daVinci Buy Management System — designed by retailers, for retailers — is an ideal solution to help retailers scale without incurring unnecessary costs. It helps your current buying team do more with their time, giving them increased visibility into customer demand based on location, seasonal history, sales volume and more, empowering them to make better, faster decisions and to plan ahead more effectively.
See also: How the daVinci Buy Management System helps you get your buy right
Leverage Your Core Team to Scale Efficiently
You already have great people working for you; the key to scaling your business is to leverage their strengths and maximize their productivity, so that you can maximize revenue as you expand into new territory.
The problem is that, in most cases, what buyers and planners are using to do their jobs today aren’t effective at helping them make the most of their time. Spreadsheets continue to be “comfort food” for retailers and buying teams, but they’re inefficient and error prone, requiring multiple instances of re-keying the same data.
The good news is, spreadsheets aren’t your only option. Better solutions exist—solutions that reduce time-intensive tasks like manual data entry and offer greater insights and visibility into actual buying data, and that allow your team to do more with their time so that you can scale without adding headcount.
The daVinci Buy Management System empowers your team to do more with their time, which is exactly what you need from them when scaling your business. Here’s how:
- daVinci automates manual tasks like reporting and purchase orders, and integrates with your PO system, giving your buyers more time to focus on buying—and on making the right buys.
- daVinci’s central database keeps all your data in one place, eliminating duplicate data entry, and real-time updates ensure all users have the most current information.
- daVinci allows you to create buy sheets for each channel, such as e-commerce and physical stores, and allows you to plan and track buys seasonally.
- daVinci helps ensure you feed the right product mix to the right stores by giving you visibility into stores by sales volume and geographic area, and letting you compare product mix using an unlimited number of attributes.
- daVinci lets you calculate precise quantities based on selected criteria, and helps you make allocation decisions before buys are committed.
How your people work, and ensuring they’re doing the right work, is critical to keeping costs low during growth cycles. Empowering your team with daVinci saves them time, and allows them to put that time to use making better, more informed buying decisions. That’s much more valuable to a growing business than hiring more buyers and relying on the same manual processes.
Put Best Practices to Work for You, and Grow with Confidence
Although the retail sector moves quickly, updated and improved best practices can lag behind. The same structures and processes that worked 20 years ago still work today, but better options exist, even if retailers are slow to adopt them.
See also: You’re Too Slow to Compete (And What to Do About It)
Retailers that do embrace new technologies and processes can gain a significant leg up on the competition, especially when expanding and opening new stores.
Give your buyers the right tools to do their jobs better than ever, and reap the rewards as your business grows.
