Each company needs to decide how best to apply agile principles across this span of activities in its own organization. But in general, we see a future in which:
Integrated customer teams combine competencies (in corporate merchandising, operations, pricing, promotions, marketing, local merchandising, and analytics, for example) to streamline decision making and act as engines of success. In this model, a traditional merchant- or buyer-led organization could be replaced with department teams that are empowered to make decisions. This could enable greater accountability for a broad set of metrics and outcomes and create shared responsibility for the success of any one category or department. Component and platform teams coordinate access to, interaction with, and return on the use of shared resources (such as web presence, physical footprint, and store space). Expert teams and shared services provide high-value standard or bespoke services to the customer teams (such as custom research, loyalty, or data analytics). Operators manage day-to-day execution on the ground (in the store or distribution center).
The power of agile in retail is to put all staff in a position akin to that of an old-fashioned store owner—accountable for the overall operation and focused on customer satisfaction. Our vision leverages agile to deliver on this promise without sacrificing the scale necessary to be successful in a global, competitive, digital world. Implementing an agile mindset in retail means enabling a singular focus on customer value by dividing both regular workflow and episodic tasks into pieces that deliver value to customers and then organizing teams to execute each piece. It requires deploying experts on these teams to be closer to the decision making and breaking through communication barriers to accomplish work faster and give teams greater empowerment in the process. Getting Started
Agile is just getting started in retail. Forward-looking retailers should experiment with different degrees and applications of agile teams and principles. We suggest a four-step roadmap.
Select a lighthouse project. Choose a pilot project or projects, taking into account the following criteria:
Visibility. Consider the effect on company culture, the degree of business attention required, and the size and number of organizational stakeholders. Business Impact. Select a mission that can have a significant effect on the business and achieve measurable progress in eight to ten weeks. Relevance. Ensure that outcomes are relevant to the larger organization; people should be able to say, “This will work for me.” Readiness. Make sure that the business units and functional leaders are engaged and excited.
Choose the practices and principles to implement in the lighthouse project.
A searchable catalog of business model examples analyzed and presented using the Business Model Canvas. These examples are pulled directly from our book.
In our books, blogs, podcast, courses and workshops, we emphasize the importance of solid customer understanding for designing great value propositions and business models. In this post, we
A searchable catalog of business model examples analyzed and presented using the Business Model Canvas. These examples are pulled directly from our book.
Many large organizations have spent decades unsuccessfully battling bureaucracy. In Think Like Amazon: 50 1/2 Ideas to Become a Digital Leader(McGrawHill Education, April 2019), John Rossman shows how Amazon has tamed bureaucracy and has become, in the process, one of the most agile firms on the planet, as well as the most valuable. Rossman’s book offers a clear and succinct account of the Amazon mindset and offers “50 ½ ideas” to enable others to learn how to think—and act—like Amazon.
Mickael Ruau's insight:
The Planning Process At Amazon
At Amazon, the external customer viewpoint is built into activities and capabilities from the outset. No significant new activity can be undertaken at Amazon unless and until there is an exhaustive management review of a six-page document explaining the activity as a narrative. As Rossman says:
Writing ideas and proposals in complete narratives results in better ideas, more clarity on the ideas, and better conversation on the ideas… The initiatives will be smaller and less risky. Writing narratives is hard, takes a long time, and is an acquired skill for the organization. High standards and an appreciation for building this capability over time are required."
The six-page narrative is supported by another document known as the PR/FAQ, which contains an imagined future press release describing the benefits customers are getting and answers to “frequently asked questions” about how the activity was developed. There is also a set of metrics by which customer benefits of the activity will be measured in real time.
These documents are rigorously reviewed by a group of senior managers before work on the activity begins. If approved, the activity is funded and incorporated in Amazon’s annual planning process known as OP1, in which the relative merits of every activity and capability, present and future, are evaluated in terms of their contribution to value for customers.
In the months of July, August, and September, while also doing all the pre-holiday work before the retail peak season hits, you are spending your time meeting, debating, writing, and reviewing your next year’s operating plans and ideas for scaling and innovating.”
Once an activity is approved and funded, the work begins and the planning documents are steadily updated as more information becomes available.
Through its real-time customer metrics, each team reports in effect to the entire senior management, not just a direct boss. By removing middle management as a significant actor from the process with its own separate goals and priorities, Amazon largely eliminates inter-unit game-playing. Metrics covering the value that is being added to Amazon’s external customers are available to everyone in real time.
Voici comment fonctionne la chaîne d'approvisionnement Amazon et la logique du géant de la vente au détail qui lui permet d'atteindre ce niveau de classe mondiale et au-delà.
Mickael Ruau's insight:
Amazon Supply Chain Secret #1: Technologie
Amazon a toujours adopté la technologie pour rendre tout ce qu'il fait plus efficace. La société n’a jamais hésité à investir dans une automatisation qui améliorerait la rapidité de sa chaîne d’approvisionnement et réduirait ses coûts à long terme.
On ne compte plus les conséquences catastrophiques de l'industrie de la mode sur l'environnement : consommatrice d'eau, produits toxiques dans les nappes phréatiques... Le modèle économique au rythme effréné de la fast-fashion est à l'origine de colossaux dégâts environnementaux et humains.
Power has shifted from manufacturers to lean retailers Benefits of Lean in Retail: Low shelf space requirement Reduced carrying cost Reduced Through Put Time o…
Caroline Cooper, eCommerce and Digital Transformation Specialist gives her views on how the Retail sector should apply Lean thinking.
Mickael Ruau's insight:
But! Lean is far from the status quo in retail. In fact, waste abounds.
Here are just a few common examples of retail waste:
Over- or underproduction
Over-processing
Excessive or unnecessary movement – product and people
Bottlenecks
Double/Triple handling
Error rate
Defects – product and machinery
Idle product
People process does not mirror systems process
Dead stock
Empty space
Most wanted items not in most accessible place
Congestion
Unnecessary complex logistics
Gaps in process – down time
Decisions made without analytics (especially Customer) — Data is King not the Buyer!
Product early or late
Lack of data or inaccurate date
Processes that add no value (people or systems)
Long lead-times
Stock in wrong place or wrong time
Broken communication channels
Holding product ‘just in case’
Generic ranges
Pushing not pulling stock
Due to the complex and often precarious systems architecture Retail IT departments have crafted over the past decade, it’s necessary to build a simple tech platform that is robust, runs through the entire end-to-end process, that enables quick changes to suit the ever-changing customer demands and provides a platform to innovate and work towards the store of the future.
Lean Retail: How to get there
Many people know the principles and origins of Lean, but I think this summary of Lean Manufacturing is useful in retail:
‘Lean means manufacturing without waste through building a series of simple innovations that make it possible to provide both continuity in process flow and a wide variety of product offering’.
Lean Retail focuses on value to the customer – scrutinising both the full life cycle of the product and the ways of working of employees, to continuously identify areas in the business that provide no value to the customer and eliminate them as waste.
The net result is a seamless, fast, value chain, with just enough product and a shopping experience and range that is personalised to the customer.
A look at the reasons why Blackstone has implemented continuous improvements across Michaels stores, helping empower and equip store associates with tools and processes to better support customers.
Neither this video nor any of the information contained herein constitutes an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any security or instrument in or to participate in any trading strategy with any Blackstone fund or other investment vehicle.
Past performance is not indicative of future results and there is no assurance that any Blackstone fund will achieve its objectives or avoid significant losses. This video may contain forward-looking statements; such statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties.
La méthode, appelée « Vision » en interne, a été lancée en 1995 : tous les dix ans, l'ensemble des collaborateurs,ainsi que des centaines de partenaires (fournisseurs, élus, artisans, clients...) sont interrogés sur leur vision du groupe dans la décennie à venir. « L'idée est d'amener nos collaborateurs à avoir une vision la plus complète des futurs probables, explique Pascal Malfoy. Travailler à dix ans permet de s'extraire de l'activité quotidienne. » Un processus de longue haleine, associant voyages d'exploration, témoignages et ateliers. C'est cette approche prospective qui fait que le groupe s'est intéressé très tôt aux « makers » ou qu'il a investit l'an dernier dans Frizbiz, une plate-forme de « jobbing » (travail à la demande entre particuliers). Avec, dans les deux cas, la volonté d'explorer de nouvelles pistes éventuellement porteuses, mais sans garantie d'y trouver un « business model » pérenne.
A searchable catalog of business model examples analyzed and presented using the Business Model Canvas. These examples are pulled directly from our book.
Today’s leading organizations are increasingly taking an agile approach to operations due to the myriad of benefits it provides. Here's how it has helped Amazon
The company is conducting an experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers to get them to achieve its ever-expanding ambitions.
Mickael Ruau's insight:
A Philosophy of Work
Jeff Bezos turned to data-driven management very early.
He wanted his grandmother to stop smoking, he recalled in a 2010 graduation speech at Princeton. He didn’t beg or appeal to sentiment. He just did the math, calculating that every puff cost her a few minutes. “You’ve taken nine years off your life!” he told her. She burst into tears.
He was 10 at the time. Decades later, he created a technological and retail giant by relying on some of the same impulses: eagerness to tell others how to behave; an instinct for bluntness bordering on confrontation; and an overarching confidence in the power of metrics, buoyed by his experience in the early 1990s at D. E. Shaw, a financial firm that overturned Wall Street convention by using algorithms to get the most out of every trade.
According to early executives and employees, Mr. Bezos was determined almost from the moment he founded Amazon in 1994 to resist the forces he thought sapped businesses over time — bureaucracy, profligate spending, lack of rigor. As the company grew, he wanted to codify his ideas about the workplace, some of them proudly counterintuitive, into instructions simple enough for a new worker to understand, general enough to apply to the nearly limitless number of businesses he wanted to enter and stringent enough to stave off the mediocrity he feared.
The result was the leadership principles, the articles of faith that describe the way Amazonians should act. In contrast to companies where declarations about their philosophy amount to vague platitudes, Amazon has rules that are part of its daily language and rituals, used in hiring, cited at meetings and quoted in food-truck lines at lunchtime. Some Amazonians say they teach them to their children.
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The guidelines conjure an empire of elite workers (principle No. 5: “Hire and develop the best”) who hold one another to towering expectations and are liberated from the forces — red tape, office politics — that keep them from delivering their utmost. Employees are to exhibit “ownership” (No. 2), or mastery of every element of their businesses, and “dive deep,” (No. 12) or find the underlying ideas that can fix problems or identify new services before shoppers even ask for them.
The workplace should be infused with transparency and precision about who is really achieving and who is not. Within Amazon, ideal employees are often described as “athletes” with endurance, speed (No. 8: “bias for action”), performance that can be measured and an ability to defy limits (No. 7: “think big”).
“You can work long, hard or smart, but at Amazon.com you can’t choose two out of three,” Mr. Bezos wrote in his 1997 letter to shareholders, when the company sold only books, and which still serves as a manifesto. He added that when he interviewed potential hires, he warned them, “It’s not easy to work here.”
Download Citation | Accidental Adoption: The Story of Scrum at Amazon.com | By late 2004, Scrum had been chosen independently as a development process by several teams at Amazon.com. From then until 2009, Scrum spread to a... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate
In a provocative shareholder letter, Jeff Bezos called upon all Amazon employees to stave off Amazon’s potential demise, maintain its Day 1 startup culture, and continue to launch innovative products and services.
Le succès de l’entreprise relève en grande partie de son agilité et de sa capacité à « façonner » son business model aux marchés sur lesquels la société décide de se battre. Je relève dans l’histoire d’Amazon 5 leçons (j’en oublie certainement beaucoup d’autres) qui peuvent être utiles à n’importe quel entrepreneur / manager qui veut optimiser son entreprise:
Quand c’est incertain, débrouille toi pour transférer le risque sur les autres.
Si une activité est cruciale pour l’exécution de ton business, alors intègre là sans te poser de question.
Il y’a forcément des synergies dans ton marketing mix, exploite-les !
Mets-toi à la place du client ; rien ne vaut le travail bien fait d’un spécialiste…
Tu mettras tout en oeuvre pour simplifier la vie de ton client et supprimer toute friction dans leur processus d’achat
Plongeons dans les détails de chacune de ces « leçons », et illustrons les avec les décisions concrètes prises par Amazon.
La rédaction a réalisé pour vous une sélection d'informations percutantes. Au menu cette semaine: marque engagée socialement, clients fidèles, Lidl offre de dormir dans l'un de ses magasins et Ralph Lauren se met à la customisation de masse.
Business and work have changed a lot over recent years: consumers expect fast and exceptional service, the competitiveness is fiercer than ever and because of this, the way we work as businesses needed to change drastically as well. Businesses need to be nimbler and ready to adapt to constantly changing situations. However, the traditional management style has failed at this and that’s particularly evident when we look at young, digitally-native companies, versus older, more traditional organizations. Those who manage to adopt new technology in a smart way are able to offer better experiences to their customers, generate more customers and
Lean principles are commonplace for manufacturing and distribution. But how do you apply lean to retail? enVista's Kurt Leisman shares how to apply lean retail to your store operations and supply chain to drive out waste.
Mickael Ruau's insight:
6. Include store associates in process improvements
Store associates are often given guidelines of how their work should be performed, but they generally have room to structure their daily tasks and make their work their own. This individual control over certain components of in-store work can lead to resistance to defining process improvements in their domain.
People can fear losing whatever creativity and freedom they have in being able to do their job the way they see fit. The only way to get your associates to accept process change more smoothly is to involve them in what to change and how to change it. Include them on lean teams and empower them to help create best practices, preferred methods, and standards as you seek to eliminate waste.
7.Learn how to recognize waste
Retailers often have not been trained to observe their processes to identify the eight types of lean waste. The 8 types of lean waste include: defects, overproduction, waiting, non-utilized talent, transportation, inventory, motion and extra processing.
Start viewing your business using this lean waste filter. You’ll be amazed by what you see.
8. Identify variability in retail functions
There is always a great amount of variability in every aspect of retailing (sales forecasting, inventory control, task management, etc). With lean, you’ll need to identify the variability in your business and then apply the lean toolbox to reduce the variability
Ultimately, this will help drive down cost. At a retail store, this may mean trailer shipments that can be processed with the same size staff.
Where variability cannot be reduced, seek to increase your flexibility. In stores, this could translate to cross training employees.
9. Focus on standardization
Complexity exacts an enormous cost on store processes. Because of this, you’ll need to focus on standardizing components and sub-processes as much as possible. Use the “KISS” principle (Keep It Simple) when developing your preferred methods and SOPs.
Standardizing will go a long way to help reduce process and service complexity.
10. Leverage lean teams to identify opportunities and craft solutions
A kaizen event will use common sense to improve cost, quality, delivery and responsiveness to your customer’s needs. A kaizen event lasts one-week and uses small cross-functional teams who seek to improve a process or problem identified within in a specific area in a very short period of time (“Quick Wins”).
I truly believe that the time has come for all retailers, large and small, to focus on the identification and elimination of waste in their businesses wherever it is found.
Mickael Ruau's insight:
In my opinion, retailers can, and should work tirelessly with customers, vendors, partners and employees in this endeavor. After all, retail is the “last 10 yards” in the supply chain and therefore, the last chance to maximize value to the customer.
Nos consultants, experts du Lean Manufacturing, vous aident à améliorer votre performance opérationnelle de 20 à 50%.
Mickael Ruau's insight:
Secteurs d’activités
Missions
Résultats
Distribution vestimentaire, bricolage
- Diagnostic des potentiels d’amélioration du flux de produits traversant l’entrepôt et le magasin + mise en œuvre - Identification des leviers d’amélioration et du plan de mise en œuvre
- Gain en délai de traversée : 22 %
- Gain en productivité main d’œuvre : 36 %
Grande Distribution, Entrepôts
- Simplification des flux
- Réimplantation selon les consommations et adressage de la réserve (entrepôt)
- Division par 2 des ruptures en rayon
- Déplacements divisés par 2
- Temps de recherche des produits divisé par 5, productivité caristes : +25%
Distribution automobile
- Amélioration des processus de vente des véhicules neufs et d’occasion
- Amélioration du processus de réparation
- Amélioration du processus de vente de pièces détachées
- Amélioration de l’expérience client (+23pts au questionnaire de satisfaction)
- Réduction délai de 22% et stock de pièces -42%
- Gain de temps vendeurs / compagnons : 18%
- Besoin de surfaces : -37%
- Produtivité picking pièces +39%
Distribution automobile, plateforme de e-commerce
- Amélioration de la fiabilité et de la productivité du picking de colis ou pièces détachées par la mise en place d’un petit train avec picking ordonnancé et stockage en petits colis
- Productivité : +72%
- Taux d’erreurs diminué de 67%
- Gain en surface : +28%, gain sur linéaire picking : 48%
Distribution
- Mise en place d’une démarche d’animation de la performance et d’ordonnancement en magasin
- Meilleure gestion et animation de magasin
- Meilleure expérience client (+12 points au questionnaire de satisfaction)
- +22 points sur le questionnaire motivation salariés aux basiques logistiques
Distribution
- Formation de 90 approvisionneurs aux basiques de la Supply Chain - Professionnalisation du personnel approvisionneur - Meilleure prise en compte des paramètres clés d’approvisionnement, échéancier, stock, demande client
Distribution
- Amélioration de la productivité en réception secondaire d’une plateforme logistique par redéfinition du besoin emballage et réimplantation - Gain surface de 36%
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