Coaching Tip

SEPTEMBER 30, 2011

B2C companies invest millions to understand the various personas, segments, demographics, and geographical nuances to help them determine how to position and manage their brands to appeal to the faceless masses. In the retail category (e.g.,

B2C 95

B2C B2B Marketing CIO 95

N2Growth Blog

JUNE 14, 2010

While much has been written about corporate vision, mission, process, leadership, strategy, branding and a variety of other business practices, it is the engineering of these practices to be disruptive that maximizes opportunities. So why do so many established and often well managed companies struggle with disruptive innovation?

Business Model 305

Business Model Blog Disruptive Innovation Brand 305

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 15, 2018

The supply chain is the heart of a company’s operations. To make the best decisions, managers need access to real-time data about their supply chain, but the limitations of legacy technologies can thwart the goal of end-to-end transparency. However, those days may soon be behind us. Insight Center. Competing in the Future.

Supply Chain 8

Supply Chain Management Retail Technology 8

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 19, 2017

The Institution of Mechanical Engineers estimates that annually between a third and a half of all food produced is wasted worldwide. Large food retailers such as Kroger, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Carrefour, and Wal-Mart stand in a unique position to address this global food issue. Companies like Whole Foods and Target in the U.S.

Retail 8

Retail Supply Chain Crisis Short-term 8

Harvard Business Review

JULY 10, 2012

So if online retailers can identify customers with different price sensitivities, why not charge different prices by customer type? Retailers often set different prices in different locations. Even so, it would be a big mistake for online retailers to charge different prices to different customers. Let me suggest two reasons.

Retail 13

Retail Hotels Price B2B 13

Harvard Business Review

MAY 28, 2018

When Naomi Simson founded RedBalloon, an online gift retailer that sells personal experiences, she was pioneering the category in Australia. Fast forward to 2016, and almost all of RedBalloon’s brand advertising was invested in traditional media outlets like radio, print, billboards, and pop-up retail stores. Not Albert.

Retail 8

Retail Audience Budgeting Advertising 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 27, 2011

By parallel, managers themselves might similarly benefit from "reverse-engineering" the criticism of not only outsiders but of their own colleagues: considering both parties as their benefactors on the road to greater performance. Most PR firms only offer cosmetic remedies to firefight reputation threats as they arise.

Engineering 14

Engineering PR How To Reputation 14

Deming Institute

JANUARY 5, 2017

I don’t think I learned anything about Deming or his work as an undergraduate Industrial Engineering student from 1991 to 1995. I was fortunate that my father had an opportunity to be a student in the famed four-day seminar, while working as an engineer at the Cadillac division of General Motors, in the late 1980s. Edwards Deming.

Deming 46

Deming TQM Kaizen Crisis 46

Harvard Business Review

JULY 31, 2017

Take the MIT Media Lab’s experiment to see whether it could estimate retail sales performance on “Black Friday,” the day following the US Thanksgiving holiday. Combining this with data on average spend per shopper enabled them to estimate a retailer’s sales , even before the company had recorded it themselves.

Marketing 8

Marketing Root Cause Analysis Management Supply Chain 8

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 13, 2014

It’s used to design and develop just about any product you can think of, from consumer goods to industrial equipment – or any service or experience ranging from retail customer service interactions to luxury hotel stays. But have you thought about the implications of this trend for management practices?

Software 8

Software Industry Productivity Products 8

Strategy Driven

MARCH 21, 2011

Suddenly it hit Bob: he hadn’t checked to make sure engineering had included the new wiring diagram in the customer’s shipment that was due to go out first thing in the morning. For well over a century managers have achieved increasing productivity on ever larger scales by dividing and subdividing work into smaller and smaller units.

Hammer 50

Hammer Chief Executive Officer Metrics Process 50

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 15, 2011

Just two months ago, we announced the Management 2.0 Challenge , asking how could technology inform and enable management innovation. That may seem obvious in the age of the crowd, but it's far from operational. New lines of business created via the innovation engine account for 20% of the company's total revenue.

Management 11

Management McKinsey Letter Retail 11

Harvard Business Review

JULY 20, 2018

In retail organizations, for example, marketing and sales has often provided significant value. Our research shows that using AI on customer data to personalize promotions can lead to a 1-2% increase in incremental sales for brick-and-mortar retailers alone. In advanced manufacturing, by contrast, operations often drive the most value.

Supply Chain 12

Supply Chain Retail Technology Learning-by-Doing 12

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 30, 2016

Activists’ interventions are often described, favorably or not depending on your point of view, as slashing and burning, taking out cost, and engaging in financial engineering. Now, you will have to translate your strategic thinking into a value creation plan that your management team and board will embrace.

Management 8

Management Short-term Constraint Apparel 8

Harvard Business Review

JULY 12, 2016

Based on our work with companies that are trying to find concrete and usable insights from petabytes of data, we have identified four common mistakes managers make when it comes to data. For example, in oil and gas exploration, big data is used to enhance existing operations and data analysis surrounding seismic drilling.

Management 8

Management Retail Sample Analysis 8

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 31, 2017

While some have invested significantly in technology, operational, and cultural changes, others are lagging behind. billion, including most major firms in the manufacturing, consumer packaged goods, financial services, and retail industries. Other financial and operating indicators showed similar disparities.

Company 8

Company Operations Human Capital Business Model 8

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 29, 2016

The first is operational, or doing what you are currently doing, better, faster, or cheaper. The next category of usage focuses on the operational model. Executed successfully, strategic transformation reinvigorates a company’s growth engine. A streaming model requires managing website uptime and bandwidth costs.

Metrics 8

Metrics Retail Content Advertising 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 17, 2016

The ability to make thousands of changes a day to its online retail service has been a key reason Amazon is expanding its online lead over Walmart and other historically “bricks and mortar” retailers. Operations in a Connected World. times faster in percentage terms. But when a product is delivered online (e.g.,

Innovation 10

Innovation Company Software Engineering 10

Harvard Business Review

MAY 22, 2018

Its hierarchical authority, specialized division of labor, and standard operating procedures enabled companies to grow far larger than they had ever been. The most common conversation I have these days with discouraged employees below senior management levels goes like this: “This company’s bureaucracy is killing me.

Bureaucracy 11

Bureaucracy Agility Energy Constraint 11

Harvard Business Review

JULY 6, 2017

The EU’s case asserts, among other things, that Google unfairly exploits its dominance in search engines and smartphone operating systems to restrict competition in shopping services, ad placement services, and smartphone app store markets. On June 27 this year the EU fined Google $2.7

Company 9

Company Engineering Operations Construction 9

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 27, 2017

Fast-growing consumer products companies such as Warby Parker, Glossier, and Dollar Shave Club are upending the traditional retail model, which depends on a manufacturer selling to a retailer that then sells to the end consumer. These include skills such as search engine optimization, digital media allocation, and digital analytics.

P&L 13

P&L Agility Fashion Media 13

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 23, 2016

Many business leaders are fond of the spurious Peter Drucker quote that “you can’t manage what you can’t measure.” For example, same-store sales or sales per square foot measure success in the retail industry, and various volume measures do it in commodity industries. Mismeasurement can lead to mismanagement.

Metrics 8

Metrics Business Model Retail Automotive 8

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 21, 2016

Before joining Facebook as a security engineer in 2015, I worked in industries from consulting to manufacturing to retail. One of the things that surprised me most about security at Facebook is the level of attention and support that we receive from the company’s senior management team. This isn’t the case.

Team 8

Team P&L Engineering Cost 8

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 20, 2015

In the past, an abundant and growing labor pool was a powerful engine of the world economy; today, the number of workers is starting to decline in many countries. In retail, for instance, productivity could increase by another one-third in developed economies and double in emerging economies between 2012 and 2025. We disagree.

Globalization 8

Globalization Productivity Products GDP 8

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 21, 2011

And I'd also want team members who knew how to get people to adopt new skills and attitudes — experts in incentives, training and development, culture, communication, stakeholder management, and redeployment. Most process engineering starts out as a project," Coco explained. "If These are "people skills.".

Six Sigma 14

Six Sigma Skills Team Compliance 14

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 26, 2011

These customer experience management initiatives can be complex. That's exactly what Portuguese airport operator ANA Aeroportos de Portugal did in its quest to attract more major airlines and connecting routes. ANA PODs: Dedicated environments designed to meet passengers' various needs throughout their time at the airport.

B2B 15

B2B Airlines Travel Stage-Gate 15

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 18, 2016

How does your organization manage the money it spends on digital? In essence, digital investments should be planned and managed according to their current and future contribution to business performance. A retailer’s point of sale (POS) system falls into that category.

Tools 8

Tools Competitive Advantage Operations Technology 8

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 5, 2018

For example, in 2009 professors Brian Becker, Mark Huselid, and Richard Beatty estimated that in most companies less than 15% of jobs are what they call strategic positions and said management should focus “disproportionate investments” on finding A players for those jobs. Connectors in the middle. High-potential future leaders.

McKinsey 8

McKinsey Human Resources Reputation Brand 8

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 2, 2012

A very similar logic lies behind fashion retailer Zara's choice to manufacture in Europe, also an expensive location in terms of labor costs. The much bigger issue for Apple is supplier availability, engineering changes, and flexibility.

Engineering 15

Engineering Bottom-up Fashion Cost 15

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 4, 2015

It’s universally acknowledged that Big Data is now a fact of life, but while large enterprises have spent heavily on managing large volumes and disparate varieties of data for analytical purposes, they have devoted far less to managing high velocity data. Data Operations Customers' So, what has changed?

Operations 8

Operations System Retail Report 8

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 22, 2012

Some senior leaders simply lean harder on their operating units, increasing their targets and demanding more growth. A few years ago, one of the world's largest retailers had literally hundreds of initiatives going after same-store sales growth. So can having a corporate reserve fund to help the operating units pay for organic growth.

Retail 11

Retail Long-term Short-term Apparel 11

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 17, 2016

They do so by building powerful growth engines. If you build a robust growth engine on a strong foundation, rather than seeking individual opportunities, you can be confident knowing that sustainable expansion will follow. Other companies known for their capabilities are similarly focused on building growth engines.

Company 8

Company Engineering Apparel Survey 8

Harvard Business Review

JULY 18, 2017

As a free-standing enterprise operating under its own brand, FirstBuild is decidedly not another attempt to transform a traditional company’s corporate culture. The small full-time FirstBuild staff includes a director, an operations lead, and a commercial lead — roles one would expect to find in any comparably sized enterprise.

Innovation 8

Innovation Early Adopters Marketing Retail 8

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 14, 2017

And yet front-line employees are still often left operating with data that’s “too little, too late.” For example, I was recently shopping at a major mattress retailer that was acquired by a bigger company. Data is not always shared efficiently. I had previously bought a mattress from them a year before.

CRM 10

CRM Banking Learning-by-Doing Wilde 10

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 9, 2017

One of us (Paul) is a strategy scholar and economist; the other (Amy) studies organizational behavior and operations management. From the perspective of the senior management at many companies, missing sales targets is a failure in the execution of an analytically sound strategy.). Insight center.

Strategy 8

Strategy Agility Execution Core Competence 8

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 29, 2012

Big-box retailers, like Best Buy, now have large, fast growing e-commerce businesses. But as more traditional businesses are being run on software and a larger component of a company's customer experience is being delivered online, everyone from marketing to general management needs to take notice.

Technology 14

Technology Venture Capitalist CIO ROI 14

Harvard Business Review

JULY 28, 2016

The scrappy startup, launched in 2012, offered a blades-by-subscription service for as little as $3 a month and quickly grew to a team of 45 engineers and 3.2 One of the ways in which P&G managed to slow Dollar Shave Club’s encroachment was by responding with its own subscription entry, the Gillette Shave Club.

Business Model 8

Business Model Retail Brand Henderson 8