Retail Business Transformation Dowling Consulting understands that, as a retailer, you are focussed upon: Reducing operating costs

Improving sales and margins Improving the return from investment in stock Attracting and retaining customers More effectively performing administrative duties For this reason, Dowling Consulting has established the Retail Business Transformation practice, based on respected expert knowledge and industry experience that all retailers can trust. Dowling and his team of retail specialists apply the fundamentals of organisational design, easy to use technology, retail industry experience and our intellect to provide insightful, innovative outcomes. We do no push out of the box or silver bullet answers. Our Retail Business Transformation services include: Retail Strategy: We consult to retailers to help set business strategies, including research, and channel assessment Retail Operations: We improve the way retailers operate right throughout the supply chain. From understanding existing business processes through to defining improved operating models to aid in aligning systems with processes Information Technology: We understand technology as an enabler of your business and driver of value creation for your customers. We will assist you to select technology solutions to meet your specific needs Multiple Channel Management: We help retailers obtain the customer engagement and profitability benefits of an integrated multiple channel approach to customer management Retail Strategy Consulting Before technology can be deployed within a retail business, a roadmap for the business is needed. You know your business well, but where to from here? Where can we grow profitability?

What new markets need attention? How do you start the next phase of the journey? These are questions every retailer faces at some point. Our specialist retail business strategy advisors can help you answer these questions and put in place a realistic plan to grow your business. We provide advice on retail strategies. We run workshops with your management team to facilitate the development of business strategies and action plans that achieve targeted outcomes and business improvements. A large part of the strategy of retailing is devoted to building the brand, and linking that to how we serve consumers is a vital aspect of our consulting services. We research the market to answer specific business questions We analyse a retailers channel strategy, and assess each channels effectiveness Once the roadmap has been established, we will ensure that the message is understood throughout the organisation a key element to successful change management. We help implement action plans to deliver business outcomes. Our philosophy is to provide clients with services designed specifically for their unique situation. Retail Operations Consulting Retailers must strive to improve their business standing still is just not an option, because, with market competitiveness the way it is, standing still really means going backwards. A key goal of any business is to maximise shareholder returns. Our retail consultants have the experience and knowledge to identify areas of retailing that may be underperforming, contributing to disengagement from customers and staff, or poor customer experience. We are also able to assist overcoming operational issues which may arise and impact profitability through pragmatic advice and expert industry knowledge. Dowling Consulting provides various levels of assistance aimed at improving operations:

Business Process Improvement: Understanding the steps the business performs today to achieve an outcome, and then refining, simplifying, or even eliminating some steps altogether in order to make the business run more efficiently. Experiential Retailing Consulting: Considering the impact of the five senses on consumer behaviour within the store, and linking this to the retail brand. Customer Relationship Management: Building knowledge and strategies on leveraging a your most important asset, your customer base. We are able to assist you in areas such as segmentation, customer intelligence and customer experience. Loyalty Program Development: Having decided to establish or modify a loyalty program, our consultants will help define the details to implement it. Business System Selection: We will help you through the journey of defining requirements, identifying the short list of appropriate vendors, facilitating the choice you make, negotiating a contract both sides can agree upon, and then managing the many facets of implementation. Our contention is that every business needs external resources to help with systems selection. We help implement action plans to deliver business outcomes. Our philosophy is to provide clients with services designed specifically for their unique situation. Retail Information Technology Consulting Information Technology lies at the heart of any retail business. Just about every step a retailer takes should be measured and stored away within the information system for analysis. This stems from the fact that if you cant measure something, it is almost impossible to improve it; Or at least know if you are on the right trend line to see improvement come in the future. Dowling Consulting can help retailers sort out their IT strategies and plan to best support the business. The following services are offered: Business Systems Review: Our experienced consultants will run through a diagnostic checklist to determine opportunities for improvement in how your current IT systems are supporting your business. We identify the improvements to make, and recommend how to achieve them. IT Strategy and Planning: We can define the future IT capabilities of your business and a pragmatic transition plan to achieve it in order to support your business

aspirations and vision. IT Service Management: We help your IT department deliver best practice and cost effective level of services to the rest of the business. Technology Research and System Selection: We understand the latest technologies, and we are passionate about retailing. Our unique industry position brings together the skills, knowledge, and experience to research new technologies and how they might be applied to achieve business outcomes. Customised Education Services: You recognise that some staff members need help in particular areas. Through the standard education courses we run, or via customised education that might be developed specifically for your situation only, Dowling can provide the services to ensure long-term growth within the business. We work with the Australian Retailers Association Retail Institute to ensure that the best options are available to you. Our philosophy is to provide clients with services designed specifically for their unique situation. Retail Channel Management Customers now expect to be able to interact with you throughout the search-buyuse lifecycle through one or more channels, as relevant to them. Dowling Consulting have specialist consultants that help you sort out your go-tomarket strategies, incorporating multiple channels. As part of the offering, we assist with: Multi-channel Strategy Use text from current online channels services description Customer Experience Management Providing a consistent experience for customers, no matter which channel they utilise and helping staff capture and access customer information when and where its needed to improve the customer experience. Online and eCommerce Use text from Online Trading services description on current Dowling site Mail Order Trading with customers via the telephone, catalogue and forms-based methods Kiosk Communicating with customers via kiosks, whether it be to trade via the kiosk or simply to allow them to access specific information about themselves or the companys products. There are many applications that lend themselves to the use of kiosks.

Our philosophy is to provide clients with services designed specifically for their unique situation. Change Management The most vital element of any implementation project is of course helping the people within the organisation deal with the changes required. Change Management is more than project management. It is all about developing improvements to work practices to achieve nominated business outcomes. Dowling has helped many organisations successfully manage the change cycle to achieve the business outcomes desired.

Business as a transformation process

All organisations are involved in some form of transformation process. They take inputs such as land, labour, capital and entrepreneurship and turn them into outputs such as physical goods and intangible services. In many cases the output of a business is a combination of goods and services; for example in a restaurant you are buying a meal but also the environment and the service. The aim of all organisations is to add value i.e. to create outputs that are worth more than the inputs. In many cases the value of inputs is measured in financial terms in which case we say that organisations aim to make a profit. A profit occurs when the revenue generated by sales exceeds the costs of providing the product. In the case of non profit organisations such as schools and hospitals, other indicators are used to measure the value added. League tables of schools' performances, for example, might measure exam results and compare the grades achieved by students with their levels of achievement when they joined the school to measure the progress. The nature of the transformation process obviously differs enormously from business to business. For example, it may involve manufacturing or providing services, it may be capital or labour intensive or be based on a single site or multi site. However whatever the nature of the business managers are constantly looking for new ways of adding value either by providing benefits and products that customers are willing to pay more for or by combining resources more efficiently to reduce costs. To increase efficiency managers are always seeking ways of producing more with the same level of inputs or producing the same amount with less inputs. This can be achieved in a variety of ways: changing working practices, investing in new technology,

motivating and inspiring staff more effectively and changing the way items are produced. For example, an important development in manufacturing in the last twenty years is known as lean production. This seeks to reduce wastage at all stages of the production process. It includes Just in Time production in which items are produced to order rather than in advance. This reduces stock levels because materials are only ordered and used when needed - they do not wait around in stock. Similarly finished goods are made to order and despatched immediately rather than being produced and then waiting for someone to buy them. Just in time production therefore removes the costs involved in storing and protecting stock. Lean production also includes a technique known as kaizen which aims to use the knowledge of employees to find ways of continuously improving the way things are done. Small, incremental changes are used to reduce costs on an ongoing basis. Adding value can also occur by generating outputs that customers are willing to pay more for. In marketing the role of the brand has become even more important in recent years as firms attempt to get customers to identify with particular values, a lifestyle and a set of aspirations. Through effective branding items can be sold for more. Just think of a basic, plain T shirt and the effect on the price that can be charged if you add a particular brand name or logo to it. Think Prada, think Armani, think Gucci and you can see the value of a brand. Also the design features of a product can generate benefits that customers will pay more for (think of Dysons vacuum cleaners, Duralit toasters and Jimmy Choo shoes) as well as factors such as the speed of delivery (1 hour opticians and photo processing), convenience (think home delivery) and flexibility (think top restaurant compared to a fast food chain). Organisations are continually reviewing what they provide and how they provide it to try and add more value. Given ongoing changes in the competitive environment with new competitors, new demands and new technologies adding value is a dynamic process. Your parents probably bought a CD and played it at home on a CD player. You download and listen on an iPod. The world of music provision and retailing has changed radically forcing organisations such as EMI to rethink their business model. Your parents probably went to a travel agent to book their holiday with a package holiday company. You go online and tailor make your own holiday. They probably went on holiday mainly within their own country or to relatively few locations overseas. You travel the world. Organisations operate in a restless world and managers need to be looking constantly at the business environment to identify changes that could be of value to them or could possibly harm them. Interestingly any change will have different effects on different

organisations. The banning of smoking in public places may damage sales of tobacco but boost sales on patches to help you give up smoking, for example. Later on we will examine the external environment of business in more detail but first we examine the different forms of business that exist and the internal activities that occur within an organisation.
IT transformation is a key factor in achieving high performance for retailers. Accenture can help you streamline information technology to enhance overall performance. Today's retailers need to transform their IT capabilities for a number of reasons. These include:

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To aggregate and analyze customer data to enhance differentiation. To increase a company's ability to respond to a rapidly changing marketplace through enhanced flexibility and speed. To operate effectively, retailers need to have one system working across stores (sometimes across national borders) to ensure the most effective use of stock and to support optimized business processes. As the hype around technology decreases, retailers are seeing clearly that technology's role is one of an enabler, speeding up of processes and delivering cost savings. The retail industry faces specific IT management challenges:

Transparency and Tracking: Retailers need greater transparency between systems and better tracking to integrate systems from manufacturer through to consumer to obtain customer and sales information. Customer Data: Information overload is a challenge for retailers because they need to collect and sift through data to convert it into useful information in a customer-centric industry. Global Data Synchronization: Enabled by radio frequency identification/electronic product coding, the entire supply chain is becoming more intelligent. This creates what Accenture calls Silent Commerce. Benefits for retailers include enabling the use of real-time data to monitor inventory levels. Radio frequency identification tagging also positions the company to better safeguard its shipments by enabling the tracking of products from manufacturer through the supply chain. Accenture collaborates with companies to meet the need for positive IT management. The goal is to enhance business processes and keep up to date with innovation to become a high-performance business.