Evolution is the only way to stay in the game. Evolution of a retailer in today's context is about building a self-sustainable and self-driving business. Let us indulge you with our take on where you should deploy no-touch measures and the trophies your business can gain by doing so.

1. How a retailer should evolve?

2. – Delium Technologies
“Inventory is the corner stone upon which you
build your retail business castle, Set your aim at
gaining its control. All other business levers work
with inventory control as the base”

3. Terms
❖ The next few slides describe how a typical retailer should evolve
with size.
❖ Almost all operations are common between a small retailer and a
big chain, a smaller retailer would do pretty much the same things
at a smaller scale. With scale would come the boon of better
reputation and market control but the curse of higher ops
overhead and lower visibility.
❖ Back office is store back office and lists operations required to be
performed by the back office team.
❖ Front office is store front office and list operations performed by
the front office team.
❖ WH is warehouse and HQ is head quarters.
❖ Depending on your business size, you can choose to stick at a
level that balances the cost vs benefit.
❖ Colours on each process signify -
❖ Red - full manual or non existent.
❖ Amber - assisted, there is a system in place. Assistance is via
canned reports or raw data that should be mined by a human
❖ Green - AI driven, system provides full automation or
actionable recommendations.

4. Evolution
Store Frontline
Store BackOffice
WarehouseHeadQuarters
LVL 1 LVL 2
BILLING
BARCODE
SHELF PLAN
SHELF REFILL
PRICING
ASSORTMENT
GRN
PAYMENTS
REORDERS
RETURNS
REORDERS
RACK PLAN
PICK & DROP
TRANSFERS
CENTRAL PUR.
VENDOR MGMT.
ACCOUNTS
BARCODE
SHELF PLAN
SHELF REFILL
BILLING
PRICING
GRN
RETURNS
REORDERS
REORDERS
RACK PLAN
PAYMENTS
ASSORTMENT
ACCOUNTS
CENTRAL PUR.
VENDOR MGMT.
TRANSFERS
PICK & DROP
LVL 3 LVL 4
Manual
Assisted
AI Assisted
AI Driven

5. Evolution
Process
Data
Continuous
Improvement
Visibility
LVL 1 LVL 2 LVL 3 LVL 4
❖ Choose the LVL you are
currently in.
❖ The motivation should be to
move to the next LVL. For eg:
From LVL2 to LVL3 will lead to
better Assisted Visibility,
Continuous Improvement,
Automated Process etc.,
❖ Remember, better those four
metrics, they directly reflect
the RoI.

6. Inferences
❖ More of the analytical work tends to get centralise with
the advance stages. Requirement for more skilled labour
would reduce.
❖ Stores get people slim, staff in stores become more of
experience managers and focus more on customer
experience.
❖ The later stages require a retailer to invest more in
keeping data clean by
❖ Better process adoption
❖ Better and smarter tools
❖ More advance stages are less prone to attrition woes as
machines have become a first class citizens in your
business operations.
❖ More advance stages see AI perform monotonous and
data intensive tasks while leaving people to think and
take the strategic choices.
❖ Choice of tools, lean processes and enforcement become
mandatory as you do down the evolution stages.

7. –Charles Darwin (rumoured)
“It is not the most intellectual or the strongest of
species that survives; but the species that survives
is the one that is able to adapt to and adjust best to
the changing environment in which it finds itself.”

8. Let’s talk!