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Ryan Grogman, Managing Partner and Perry Kramer, Managing PartnerThat’s where Retail Consulting Partners (RCP) can help.
As a full-service retail management consulting firm, RCP advises its retail customers on all aspects of their business, such as corporate strategy, business operations, and retail technology solutions. Across all of these pillars, the company has mature methodologies for strategy, selection, and implementation. In each of these phases, RCP believes it’s imperative that retailers take the time to understand and map their unique customer journeys. To this end, the company helps clients define what future state success looks like before they head down the path of designing, selecting, or implementing new customer experience processes or technologies. “The customer experience is at the heart of every retailer’s business strategy, and RCP has been focused on guiding and enabling retailers on these strategies since inception,” says Ryan Grogman, the Managing Partner of Retail Consulting Partners (RCP).
RCP has developed a strategic methodology based on the different drivers and personas of its clients’ customer base. The company works with these retailers to design and build out a customer experience that not only aligns with their current maturity model but also provides them with the flexibility to dynamically pivot as either their business priorities or customer needs shift. For example, RCP worked with several of the nation’s leading specialty retail chains to create an enhanced customer experience that increased loyalty and profitability by driving customer retention.
“A successful customer experience is unique to each retailer and is ultimately driven by their distinguishing functions, products, promotions, and associates across all the channels,” says Perry Kramer, the Managing Partner of Retail Consulting Partners (RCP).
RCP’s practice is equally focused on strategy, selection, and implementation. The company has a large portfolio of successful implementations which provides them with a unique understanding of implementation challenges and is grounded in what works in the real world as opposed to simply helping lay out a shiny plan with no stake in ultimate success. RCP has no vendor-paid incentives to pick a particular technology solution, allowing it to remain vendor-agnostic in order to evaluate and select the best solution for retailers.
RCP has several significant competitive advantages in the management consulting space. First, the entire leadership team has spent their careers in retail, and this is the only industry within which the company operates. Every RCP associate has also spent time working in the retail industry. This allows RCP establish credibility with clients. Additionally, this retail specific tenure allows them to more quickly and effectively understand their clients’ unique challenges and requirements.
The customer experience is at the heart of every retailer’s business strategy, and RCP has been focused on guiding and enabling retailers on these strategies since inception
RCP’s practice is equally focused on strategy, selection, and implementation. The company has a large portfolio of successful implementations which provides them with a unique understanding of implementation challenges and is grounded in what works in the real world as opposed to simply helping lay out a shiny plan with no stake in ultimate success. RCP has no vendor-paid incentives to pick a particular technology solution, allowing it to remain vendor-agnostic in order to evaluate and select the best solution for retailers.
Not stopping there, RCP provides retail industry analysis. Through its annual surveys and countless vendor interactions, demonstrations and RFPs, the entire firm is able to stay current on emerging trends in the solution space while look ahead to where the industry is shifting in the coming years.
Retailers are Prioritizing a Unified Commerce Experience for their Customers, According to RCP's Latest Industry Report
Thursday, October 05, 2023
Key priorities include reducing omni-order fulfillment friction, enhancing real-time inventory visibility, and personalizing the customer experience.
BOSTON - According to Retail Consulting Partners (RCP's) 24th Annual POS & Customer Engagement Survey, 80% of retailers have ranked growing and enhancing digital commerce as their top business priority. Change is the one constant in retail, and even though in-store, physical retail remains the dominant sales channel, how and where the consumer prefers to shop continues to shift, with online and in-store experiences blending into one another. Phygital, omnipresent, digitalization, and omni-channel are all terms used to describe the rapid ascension of Unified Commerce, and retailers are prioritizing their investments and offerings to create the most seamless customer experience possible.
However, achieving a truly seamless customer experience poses certain challenges, as revealed by a survey of retailers. More than 70% of respondents indicated that one of their top customer engagement priorities for the year is reducing the friction in existing store fulfillment processes for digital sales. One crucial aspect of minimizing this friction is ensuring visibility of inventory. John Eagles, Managing Partner at RCP, commented that "many retailers have faced difficulties in obtaining accurate real-time inventory information from both stores and distribution centers and sharing this information with customers." To address this issue at the store level, 54% of retailers surveyed identified enhancing order management capabilities and real-time product visibility as a top priority for their point-of-sale (POS) systems. Furthermore, the next highest priority for store systems also pertains to order management, with more than 50% of retailers planning to refine store order orchestration and enhance omni-channel capabilities to offer greater convenience and brand differentiation to their customers.
Beyond fulfillment capabilities, retailers recognize the importance of having omni-channel access to customer information to achieve true unified commerce customer engagement. Having a comprehensive 360-degree view of the customer across all channels can enable in-store associates to deliver a more personalized shopping experience, which is a top customer engagement priority for more than half of the surveyed retailers. Arjune Ramdan, Manager at RCP, added that "a robust Customer Relationship Marketing (CRM) solution and Single View of the Customer (SVC) platform create a comprehensive database of segmented customer information that can drive relevant promotions and enhanced engagement, allowing retailers to serve customers more intimately and theatrically."
The survey and its analysis provide deeper insights into where retailers are focusing their investments. Managing Partner Perry Kramer suggests that retailers should "future-proof their technology solutions by prioritizing open integration standards and microservices, which offer greater flexibility and extensibility for scaling effectively and adding capabilities more rapidly than traditional legacy applications." Implementing solutions built on modern technology architectures will also enable retailers to seamlessly transition the customer experience across POS systems, mobile devices, and e-commerce platforms.
Company
Retail Consulting Partners (RCP)
Management
Ryan Grogman, Managing Partner and Perry Kramer, Managing Partner
Description
RCP is an innovative retail management consulting firm dedicated to providing superior service by combining its consultants' deep retail business knowledge and cross-functional capabilities to deliver superior design and implementation of strategy, technology, and process solutions.
