How To Get Executive Level Approval For Workforce Management Solutions

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•White Paper: How To Get Executive Level Approval For Workforce Management Solutions

By Anna Clark

A survey of more than 100 store managers conducted by a retail trade magazine in the summer of 2010 provides revealing insight into why mid-sized and large retailers so often struggle to execute their strategy consistently in their stores. The survey, conducted by Integrated Solutions for Retailers, revealed the following:

• 67 percent of store managers said the amount of store workload has increased over the last year
• Almost 80 percent said the number of markdowns and promotions has increased over the past 12 months
• 44 percent said their labor budget has decreased
• 31 percent of store managers said they spend 10-20 hours or more per week answering e-mail and voicemail
• 26 per cent of store managers disagree there is good communication flow between stores and corporate
• 86 percent said technology helps them do their jobs better and improve customer service
• 73 percent said manager dashboards were valuable or very valuable, but 63 percent don't have them
• 72 percent said automated labor scheduling was valuable or very valuable, but 52 percent don't have a system to support this

Too often, store managers, who are usually a retail chain's best salespeople, are stuck in an office, buried by email, paper reports, and voice mails. Instead of helping customers and coaching associates, they are spending hours processing and replying to duplicate and incorrect emails, reading out-of-date reports, calculating payroll, or writing the weekly employee schedule. They are also overloaded with tasks sent to them by various departments in corporate such as Merchandising, Loss Prevention, and Human Resources. Each functional area in corporate thinks their projects ought to be a priority for the store manager to complete, but because headquarters lacks overall visibility into the task workload being sent to stores, store managers have too much to do. Some things get done, some do not. And what does get done varies from store to store.

Click Here To Download:
•White Paper: How To Get Executive Level Approval For Workforce Management Solutions