This is absolutely a problem in retailing today. The torrent of data that now flows from HQ to the field is remarkable, and the expectations HQ has on district and store managers to extract insights from and apply to running their stores is often unrealistic. HQ needs to focus on the critical, relevant data that DMs/store managers need to make decisions and run their stores. HQ also needs to make the information more visual and easy to process and use by field managers. A little more training on how to interpret and use the data would also go a long way.

The local stores don’t need data; they need solutions. If a chain finds that broad-stroke initiatives don’t apply or make sense when they’ve filtered down, it’s the chain management’s fault, not the district or local guy. That said, sometimes the district or local guy is not the right person for the job. Have someone outside the chain find where the problem is and fix it. Internally there will be too much blame going on.

Two things are true about effective communications between HQ and stores. One, communication from HQ to stores could be much better. Two, retailers are spending a lot of time, money, and effort on the shiny new objects, often at the expense of basics that may be just as important and are certainly the underpinning of a well-oiled machine. There are existing tools in the marketplace already that are designed to improve the dissemination of the vision at the top to the trenches of execution, yet many retailers today are not spending the time to look at them. Retailers ignore these tools at their own risk.

Where is Reflexis when you need them? Pretty much, this article sums up all of the challenges that company addresses. Corporate initiatives are planned in isolation of each other – marketing vs. merchandising vs. store ops vs. everyone else. Everyone at HQ thinks they have a say in what happens in stores. The reality of that view is chaos – 10 lbs of work in a 5 lb bag, often without clear prioritization for the store and without all the pieces in place in order to execute, and not designed to execute in that store’s format, forget about the labor available to do non-selling work. The solution has been around for almost 20 years now. But the hardest part of selling it is getting corporate to recognize the ridiculous and competing demands that are thrown over the wall at stores. You can’t solve a problem if you can’t admit you have one, and if multiple corporate resources don’t walk a mile in a store’s shoes, they’ll never have the visibility to help them develop the… Read more »

I would flip the question. “What challenges does corporate face in acting on individual regions’ and stores’ NEEDS?” Corporate may indeed have solid strategies and initiatives at the macro level. But until the execution is solved for at the micro level it can’t be effective. In fact it can be harmful. There are no cookie cutter solutions today. Timing and size of store are critical issues. Boston needs Fall product six weeks before Atlanta and there is a lot of Fall product that Miami may never need. Or the attitude and aesthetic of Fall is just different in Miami than it is in Boston. Same brand promise, different solution for CLIMATE. And I can’t keep track of the number of mall stores I visit where there is clearly four pounds being sent to a two pound store. I can see the good product, but I can’t see the story. The stores are being given an impossible job of sorting it all out. Even when I see the two-inch thick floor set manual out on the… Read more »

Hey, here’s novel idea: Let’s call it a “dose of reality.” Every month have some executives work (really work, not observe) in a store for two days and employ the strategies about to be mandated to district personnel. Then, upon their return to the offices, have a meeting where top management gets their doses of reality about what is and isn’t easy to implement, and what other problems they learned during their time in the store. This executive visit should happen at least once every quarter.

I haven’t been a chain store manager in a long time but I can say with confidence that the lack of communications between headquarters and the stores isn’t anything new. We see it all the time, store associates who can’t answer customer questions or deliver incorrect information.

Sharing data that may or may not be useful at store management level aside, corporate offices have a hard enough time keeping store managers up on sales, promotions, new company direction, and policies. It’s always a good idea for headquarters personal to spend quality time on the sales floor but it doesn’t happen often enough.

HQ managers would say that the field doesn’t execute its direction, and field managers would say that HQ doesn’t listen to its feedback. This is not a new problem but retail consolidation has made it worse. Back when the business was dominated by local and regional department stores and discounters, it was easier for the HQ team (buyers and others) to be personally hands-on by visiting stores. Today’s corporate managers are often overwhelmed by data, bureaucracy and meetings.

So, two potential solutions: First, make sure the “data science” is robust enough to tailor each store’s assortment to its very specific preferences — whether climate, lifestyle or demographic. Second, make sure that field managers are empowered to a degree — but not at the expense of major company-wide initiatives such as a brand introduction or category rollout. Easier said than done!

There are two broad types of communications between stores and headquarters. One type involve plan-o-grams, initial and changes to assortments and pricing, inbound goods, and general transactional data. These represent the operational flow and lifeblood of the store and how HQ and store make meaning out of inventory and customer transactions. The other communication category is more soft and squishy but equally important: the brand’s and banner’s story, execution of the visual experience in each store, and the use of technology in the hands of the store associates and as embedded intelligence in the store itself. Both happen in parallel but not at the exclusion of the other. They are intertwined and, properly set up and executed, they can be the difference between failure and success. Organizations tend to focus operationally on the former type of communications due to its “hard” data with measurable, tangible, and more real characteristics. The thinking is if you focus on that category, the second one will come through according to active management of the right KPIs. From my experience,… Read more »

Communication is such a key factor for retailers. Store walkthroughs, internal audits, operational standards and district and regional team gatherings are critical for district and regional managers to work with individual stores to build not just relationships but the ability to communicate well. Setting a new POP display rollout when stores are already underwater throws stores into a frenzy — with many store managers just abandoning whatever instructions were forwarded from HQ. Marketers at HQ then start wondering why their nationwide marketing campaign performed so poorly. Companies like Reflexis, Opterus, Tulip, et. al. and some of the larger time management vendors have optimized HQ-store communication solutions that can be critical for retail.

Before speaking about the challenges that district and store managers face in acting on corporate initiatives, it behooves us to step back and examine the fundamental gap between retail stores and the corporate office. The gap is not one way, from corporate down to the stores, but in fact is both ways, as corporate consistently fails to acknowledge critical feedback from the retail workers that can be used to dramatically improve customer experience and revenue.

Corporate executives involved in determining retail strategy must begin to spend time in stores on a frequent basis, and also develop key contacts at the store level to provide them with frank, honest feedback about issues facing store associates as well as the difficulty of translating corporate initiatives. Only in this way can we work to lessen this critical gap.

Store compliance with corporate initiatives is always a challenge. With all the daily activities of managing a store, it is often difficult to complete activities assigned by corporate, either because they don’t have the time or don’t fully understand how to complete the tasks. In some cases the task might not even make sense for the context of the individual store.

As others have mentioned, there are great technologies, like Reflexis, that help companies disseminate, monitor and respond to tasks to better manage the compliance of corporate initiatives. It is important for the systems be monitored in real-time to enable store managers, district managers and corporate teams to sense and respond quickly. It doesn’t help to respond to yesterdays problems today yet almost all retailers do just that. They identify problems of shortage, shrink, theft, margin after it has happened via yesterdays TLOG … a day late and usually more than a dollar short.