In the current economic environment, it is important that businesses find ways to stand out, tighten their operations, and increase their revenues while keeping expenses low. As many businesses struggle to stay ahead of the competition, the day-to-day operations of the business are more than enough to keep management busy, especially in smaller businesses where owners or managers wear many hats. Choosing to use an experienced consultant may allow businesses the ability to grow, rather than simply attempting to maintain the status quo.
Business consultants can range from certified public accountants (CPAs), attorneys who are skilled in business law, or consulting firms who offer services that apply to a larger range of business related activities such as management, sales, or marketing. The number one benefit that consultants can offer to businesses is that they can provide temporary expertise. Hiring a consultant allows firms the ability to pay only for the services they need, rather than investing in pricey technologies or paying to keep staff on hand that may not always be needed. In addition, hiring a consultant enables cost benefits associated with a lack of taxes, the need to pay benefits, or human resources issues that are associated with hiring a new full-time employee. The costs involved in hiring a consultant are also scalable, so the firm is able to track costs and match them to the projects completed by the consultant. This allows the firm to analyze the value provided by the consultant. Finally, when the firm no longer needs the consultant’s services, the relationship is easily terminated.
Consultants also provide a significant amount of value for an organization. They can help to develop strategies for growth or manage projects. Since consultants are not committed to a single firm, they bring experience from a variety of companies and industries, which allows them to offer creative solutions and enables “out of the box” thinking. They can provide an objective viewpoint, which allows for more diverse ideas than could be provided solely by employees within the organization. A consultant may have a higher level of business expertise than the average employee and can provide unique solutions for businesses. Companies may want to consider the advantages of the level of expertise that can be brought by a consultant, as well as how they could benefit from having an established strategic plan.
Of course, an organization should continue to track the benefits provided by a consultant. As the firm grows, it may become more cost efficient to bring the services provided by a consultant in-house, so value should be routinely monitored. Having full-time employees provides its own benefits such as specific industry experience, the ability to perform varied organizational duties, a full-time presence on site, and a set salary. However for many companies, the flexibility provided by an outside consultant can be the most cost-effective and valuable option for business development and revenue growth.
A business consultantcan be a financially- genius option for your private venture to use the experience and skills of a consultant. Additionally, employing a good small business consultant can cost you less than a permanent experienced employee.
If you're talking about business consultant here, l'd like to highlight certain reasons why businesses consult experts: To discover the problem: In numerous cases, a business may be facing difficult situations like internal mismanagement, financial issues, technology blocks, etc For this situation, a business consultant can come in handy to analyse the activities inside your startup, run a few scrutinies and decide the right solution for the issue. To implement a solution: Now and again, your business may have an objective that you can't accomplish either on the grounds that there is a lack of skills or in light of the fact that your company is not ready to accomplish those goals. Talking to a small business consultant can help you to accomplish short term goals easily. To improve: Your startup may achieve its goals in a short span, but there are things you could be improving without realizing or understanding the starting point. A business advisor can come in and provide crisp views and assess any or all territories of your business, and decide the procedures and techniques to expand.
Business consultants have worked with many companies in the same industry and know the ins and outs of market trends. They know what other competing companies are doing, and so their recommendations will help your company outsmart competitors easily. Their experience can also save you money by reducing the time you would spend on solving problems and getting your projects completed on budget. When the scope or complexity of a project exceeds the abilities of your staff, hiring consultants is a great way to fill the gaps Your consultant will likely have experience in your exact field and have past projects that may mirror your situation. This helps to give you peace of mind knowing that your business is being guided by an expert who has seen your situation before They provide skill and proficiency to increase growth rate of business. A consultant is simply the right kind of helper and a sympathetic partner.
A business consultantcan be a financially- genius option for your private venture to use the experience and skills of a consultant. Additionally, employing a good small business consultant can cost you less than a permanent experienced employee.
A super market is a departmentalised retail establishment having four basic departments viz. self-service grocery, meat produce, dairy products plus other household departments, doing a maximum business. It may be entirely owner-operated or have some of the departments leased out on a concession basis.
There are few challenges in retail tougher than managing grocery retail supply chains; optimizing a broad inventory that includes fresh and short-shelf-life products is not easy. And there are few things that show better what a supply chain professional and a supermarket inventory management system can do and the impact they can have on profitability. Better replenishment of perishables means your displays look better, customers get fresher goods and you sell more. So let’s look at how effective grocery store inventory management makes best use of products’ shelf life information and category level consumer behavior to cut retail food waste.
Having worked with fresh goods wholesalers and retailers from big to small, high end to price-driven, supermarkets, convenience stores and cash & carry chains it’s clear that replenishment teams walk a tightrope between spoilage costs and shelf presentation, so it’s really important to get the balance right.
Spoilage forecasts can be used in order parameter calculation, but we also use it in replenishment calculations by factoring in future spoilage. In DC environments we usually do this by introducing batch level inventory balances with ‘sell-by’ date information. This helps keep availability high by replenishing before stock spoils, and it also flags items that need to be sold quickly.
Better replenishment of perishables means your displays look better, customers get fresher goods and you sell more.
In retail environments this is of course trickier as consumers don’t always operate on ‘first-in-first-out’ principle – quite the opposite actually! – but incorporating the simulated spoilage in the calculations really helps keep availability optimal even for low-volume products – but it can also increase food waste. You have to be clear that your priority is availability over spoilage if you decide to use this approach.
In retail, big gains come from small improvements across countless SKU-Store -combinations. To get the big figures right you have to master your low level data. One good example is from a department store that’s known for its high-end food halls. When managers followed up an exception alert they discovered unacceptable levels of spoilage on fresh meat counters. An analysis of store-level data suggested that the problem only affected smaller, out-of-town stores. Drilling down further into the data to SKU-Store-level pinpointed the culprits; a small number of more expensive products, such as Beef Wellington. Further analysis of daily sales, forecasts and delivery schedules showed that sales were primarily on a Friday and Saturday – typically these premium meat products would be the centerpiece of a weekend family meal. Yet deliveries were typically on Mondays. Sales from Monday to Thursday sales were low and given the batch size most of the delivery would end up being thrown away. The store chain simply reduced the selection of expensive products available Monday to Thursday and got on top of the problem. Of course, it helped that they had a solution in place that gave them instant results and thus complete transparency.
In many perishable categories, products often substitute so readily for one another that the consumer can switch without a second thought. Fresh bread is a good example. With one particular client we began the process of optimizing bread replenishment by identifying ‘must-haves’ in each sub category via store-level ABC-classification. We ran replenishment on the basis that ‘nice-to-haves’ could run out towards the end of the evening, but that there should always be stock in all basic categories (e.g. sliced white, wholemeal, seeded etc). The optimization had the expected impact on food waste – but we were quite surprised by how much category sales and sales margins increased (over 10 percentage point on average). Fresher products, due to better inventory turnover, simply appealed more to consumers.
The simplest step to take is to incorporate shelf life expectation into your supermarket inventory management system’s ordering parameters. For example, it can be used to tie your safety stock calculation to a max ‘x’% of expected shelf life forecast, or building exception reports when safety stocks are likely to creep over a set threshold. Meanwhile setting exceptions for when a case pack’s days of supply exceed ‘y’% of shelf life can help highlight products needing close supervision.
In many perishable categories, products often substitute so readily for one another that the consumer can switch without a second thought. Fresh bread is a good example. With one particular client we began the process of optimizing bread replenishment by identifying ‘must-haves’ in each sub category via store-level ABC-classification. We ran replenishment on the basis that ‘nice-to-haves’ could run out towards the end of the evening, but that there should always be stock in all basic categories (e.g. sliced white, wholemeal, seeded etc). The optimization had the expected impact on food waste – but we were quite surprised by how much category sales and sales margins increased (over 10 percentage point on average). Fresher products, due to better inventory turnover, simply appealed more to consumers.
In retail, big gains come from small improvements across countless SKU-Store -combinations. To get the big figures right you have to master your low level data.
Good data is essential for good grocery store inventory management, especially given it’s such a complex environment, but it’s not enough of itself. All the data in the world is of no help if you can’t access it and make sense of it easily. To do that you need a supermarket inventory management system with the power to handle big data, to interrogate it however you choose and to deliver results in real time. After all, if you’re managing fresh goods, a two hours wait for an answer to an important question is two hours too long.