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Retail Technology Roadmap

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Product Overview

Date of PublicationJune 1, 2023
GeographyWorldwide
LicenseEnterprise license for the Toolkit
FormatMicrosoft Excel

While most organizations typically perform annual planning sessions, they usually fall short in building a well-designed and effective three
year plan. This lack of long-term planning prevents the correct sequencing and prioritization of multiple strategic initiatives into a cohesive structure that delivers the following:

  • Focus on key initiatives
  • Understanding of cross functional impact on your organization
  • Flexibility to adjust and re-prioritize as your strategy changes
  • Balancing of business and IT resources and budgets

Typical retail plans are a list of potential initiatives submitted by various business units. They are not prioritized across the enterprise so they lack a cohesive order. Worse, they are PowerPoint slides loaded with Industry buzzwords related to executive hot buttons that provides only a high level end state picture, not the journey to get there.

The roadmap is the properly sequenced set of initiatives that gets you to the desired end state efficiently, on time and within acceptable risk levels. It is the guide used to prioritize WHAT should be done, WHEN (initiative schedule and phases) and, by WHOM (Initiative Owners), and WHERE countries, regions, banners).

More description below

It is essential for Retailers to develop this comprehensive plan in order to deal with the painful reality that IT and business units cannot successfully execute on everything being asked of them. The ultimate responsibility for the roadmap resides with senior executives, who are able to view available business and IT resources, project cost ᄅ Copyright 2011 IHL Group and C-CORE Consulting Group All Rights Reserved. ihlservices.com 4 estimates vs. available funds, and dependencies. Through a well-developed roadmap, retail technology leaders understand what can be accomplished with these resources and rationalize the number of projects balancing strategy, cost and risk. It is better to focus on 10 well executed core projects than to attempt to deliver 25-30 poorly executed projects that require additional maintenance and support due to an over-ambitious plan.

The Rapid Project Retail Roadmap Toolkit includes the following functions:

Roadmap Development and Audit
Governance Model Execution
PMO Set-up/Methodology Review
Business Function Model Development
Process Management/Harmonization
Program Key Design Points
Risk Assessments
Process Training for Teams
Program Executive/CIO Support
Vendor/System Selection Approach

 

Why IHL/C-CORE?

Quite simply, speed and experience. When you deal with IHL/C-CORE you are dealing with a core group of experts with over 100 combined years of Research and Implementations. When you use one of the large consulting outfits you are generally receiving the low level experienced personnel in the engagement or paying exhorbitant fees for the principals and a delayed project timeframe. With IHL/C-CORE – you get both the speed to market and the experience of many installations and vendor selections.

Finally, utilizing IHL’s Retail Technology Database, we are quickly able to find multiple references for each vendor (not just the references they hand select). Together, IHL/C-CORE can provide an unmatched solution of technology insight, contacts, and selection/implementation.

Will the toolkit work effectively with my existing project methodology?

The Toolkit is content rich and designed to be quickly aligned with project management best practices. The Toolkit focuses on jump-starting the requirements definition and vendor evaluation and provides Microsoft office compatible based templates easily converted to a retailers templates and methodology to launch the project quickly while leveraging the project disciplines that retailers have developed in their IT organizations.

Why would I need to use the toolkit? I have a strong IT organization.

Vendors and Retailers have both expressed concerns over the challenges of starting a project. Many of the resources responsible for the current platform support have been promoted, or moved to other organizations. Typically, retailers have not placed much value in creating and updating process and requirements repositories. The RAPID PROJECT TOOLKIT provides the mechanism to jump-start the process and move through business requirement definition and vendor selection quickly.

Why would I not use the ARTS RFP instead of this toolkit?

The Rapid Toolkit includes the ARTS RFP Framework but takes the process to a much deeper level than just the business requirements and an RFP template. It provides tools and templates for due diligence around the vendor evaluation and scoring process required today due to SOX. It also includes training requirements estimates, deployment plans, testing plans and risk management templates. Finally, the RAPID PROJECT TOOLKIT also provides a user adjusted weighting system so that the retailers can present the RFP according to the most important needs of the retailer. In other words, it allows the retailer to direct the RFP towards how they operate rather than a standard industry document only.

How much help will I need to use this toolkit?

We estimate that the skills transfer can take place in 10 full productive days, including customizing the information for the retailer’s business, depending on the complexity of the retail operation.

For more information, please feel free to contact us.

The Rapid Project Retail Roadmap Toolkit pricing includes a product license fee for the tool and consulting/training from our experts. For more information, please contact as at 615-591-2955 or click below to send an email.

Click here to request more information about this product

 IHL Group License and Fair Use Agreement

All of IHL Group’s generally available research are electronic licenses and can be shared freely within the purchasing organization and wholly owned subsidiaries. We only ask that this information not be shared with partners or others outside the purchasing company without authorization from IHL Group. The license does not extend to joint ventures or other partnerships. If the relationship is not a wholly-owned subsidiary, then both parties would need a license.

Practically, this implies the following:

  1. The purchasing company can use the data and research worldwide internally as long as the international organizations are wholly owned subsidiaries of the purchasing company.
  2. The data or any research cannot be distributed in whole or in part to partners or customers without express written approval from IHL Group.
  3. The purchasing company may quote components of the data (limited use) in presentations to customers such as specific charts. This is limited to percentage components, not individual unit information. Unit data cannot be shared externally without express written approval from IHL Group. All references to the data in presentations should include credit to IHL Group for the data.
  4. The purchasing company can reference qualitative quotes in printed material with written approval from IHL Group.
  5. All requests requiring written approval should be submitted to ihl(at)ihlservices.com and will be reviewed within one business day.

For any questions regarding this policy, please contact us at 1-888-IHL-6777 (North America) +1.615.591.2955 (International) or email us at ihl(at)ihlservices.com.

Testimonials

At Sobeys, the Rapid Project Toolkit has greatly accelerated our timelines and provided significant savings to total project costs. We firmly believe in the toolkit methodology.
Clinton Keay, SVP and CIO at Sobey’s

Our cross functional team was amazed at the level of detail the Workforce Management Toolkit helped them to think about. We used the POS Toolkit & I recommended using the Workforce Management one knowing the value we’d get from it and so far we have.
Ed Collupy, VP of Information Technology, The Pantry, Inc.

We will use this toolkit approach for all future projects. 
Director of Store Support, Multi-National Retailer

The Toolkit has saved my team 6 months in trying to define requirements and pull this project together. I never thought we would get to RFP this quickly.
VP of Application Development, Fashion Retailer

I am blown away by the toolkit and the amount of work you guys have put into this, all for the benefit of the retailer.
Ex CIO Fortune 500 Fashion Retailer