Articles

Written by: Matt Pillar

Reflexive action is the result of prompts triggered by external stimuli. You touch a hot surface, and your nerve endings prompt your brain to prompt you to promptly remove your fingers from the situation. The reaction takes a fraction of a second and it's hard-wired into your being; it's a factory preset that we're all born with. Technology, for all its worth and speed, probably can't help your business react to anomaly situations quite that quickly. But many retailers are finding that real-time alerts can be 'hard-wired' into their company's central nervous systems, helping them react to external stimuli in near real-time.

Why is real-time exception reporting a slam-dunk investment in this economic climate?

• It's a multidisciplinary technology. You can implement once and, with a few 'turns of the wrench,' realize immediate improvement in:
  • Associate training
  • LP
  • Operations
  • Facilities management
  • POS and cross-channel sales
  • Accounting
  • Compliance
  • Many others

• It's easy to implement. While alert parameters, underlying applications, and alert delivery methods are highly customizable, there are typically no consultants or drawn-out installation schedules necessary. And the good solution providers are database and platform independent, delivering SaaS models for a nominal monthly, per-site fee. The typical implementation timeframe is under three months.

• It's easy to use, and you probably already have the necessary infrastructure. Alerts can be sent to managers on their cell phones and PDAs, or via email, the web, and/or third-party applications.

• It creates visibility into challenges and problems that you can address and correct immediately.

There's an important distinction between exception reporting and exception alerting. Each has its place and value, but if you're not managing exceptions now, focus your effort on building an alert system so you can start taking action in real-time. Once you start seeing some real-world benefits, you'll get excited about the reporting and analysis you can generate. And when it comes time to analyze a critical mass of exception reports, the single most important thing to do with your newfound intelligence is to freshen up policies and procedures to address your findings.

It's a heck of a good time to get granular and figure out what's going on, and specifically, going wrong in your stores. Exception alerts are a great window into that world.