Dynamic global forces are shaping a new consumer marketplace that is transforming the retail industry and will clearly demarcate winners and losers over the next few years.
Consumers have never been more in control. They have come to expect superb quality, selection and service and are perfectly willing to abandon any retailer that can’t deliver.
Mega-retailers dominate the current global marketplace. In order to compete, retailers must deliver increasingly differentiated products and services or be caught in the vicious cycle of a commodity business.

Multi-channel routes to market must deliver a seamless customer shopping experience whilst delivering operational synergies through a single view of inventory and customer.
Retailers and industry stakeholders around the world are placing a renewed emphasis on growth and sustained long-term profitability.

And, these challenges come on top of a deflationary operating environment, market saturation and slowing population growth!

Most retailers understand the need to revolutionise their business processes to compete in this fiercely competitive environment but are struggling with challenges such as disparate organisation structures and processes or business resistance to change. In particular, the challenge is how to transform IT to support the new business model and be responsive to on-going market change.

How The Birchman Group can help:

Consultancy services

The Birchman Group consultants combine in-depth Retail Industry knowledge with senior level Business and Technology experience. This enables our Consulting Practice to assist our customers to:

• Develop a strategy and business case to survive and thrive in the competitive and fast changing retail marketplace that wins support from the key business stakeholders.
• Extract maximum benefit from the resulting technology investments through programme management, benefits tracking, process improvement, change management and other Value Management services.

Solution services

The Birchman Retail Group works with our customers on both tactical solutions and those supporting complete business transformations.

Tactical solutions are available for a wide range of applications: from POS management and RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tools, to Business Analytics that can measure and help improve the performance of the IT department.

Solutions for Retail provides a set of comprehensive solutions designed specifically for the new retail environment, where every link in your retail value chain, from forecasting and planning to allocation and replenishment, must be focused on meeting and surpassing customer expectations.

Combining supply chain logic with customer relationship management, Birchman Solutions for Retail helps you do it all - from optimising strategic partnerships, leveraging customer data to exploiting multiple sales channels.

Today’s challenges point to a stronger-than-ever need for an integrated solution that supports the new retail environment, one that helps you show a profit by:

• Enhancing your supply chain efficiency with comprehensive planning, forecasting, allocation, and replenishment.
• Using e-business versatility to collaborate with suppliers and communicate with customers.
• Using powerful data-mining tools to retrieve information for reports, customer profiles, and provide a single view of your entire operations from end to end.
• Ensuring customer loyalty by delivering excellent service through multiple sales channels and tailored marketing campaigns.