IBM CEO and APQC Board Member Ginni Rometty recently declared the death of traditional marketing as we know it. New marketers MUST focus directly to the customer, not to the segment. Retailers are definitely feeling this pressure as consumers are pressuring them to lower prices, provide better service, and do it all at the time and place of the customer’s choosing. In many way, retailers have to go directly to customers to transact business, rather than customers going to retailers. This is the birth of the omni-channel: Commerce is everywhere.
First, the APQC retail process classification framework (PCF) is a great tool for organizations define and control their business processes, especially in times like these where things are changing quickly and we’re all looking to keep things simple and move forward. A previous blog post discussed the unique features of APQC and Microsoft’s Retail framework, ut there is so much more potential for the retail PCF, especially in these tumultuous times. Many organizations have additional processes that aren’t necessarily captured in this framework, but they can be.
Second, organizations benefit from the Retail PCF’s flexibility: If a process is not included in the framework, it can be easily added on, which, in turn, extends the PCF. There are clear business rules in place to help organizations identify where and how to extend the PCF (MECE and HFD). The stage is set for organizations to reduce complexity and accelerate their change efforts to meet the new demands that retailers face. There are many places where these additions make sense. For example, consider retailers that sell foods (fresh, frozen, grocery items) in addition to their hard and soft lines. The current retail PCF doesn’t address which processes support product sourcing, manage the goods once they’re received, or deal with fresh-chain vendors.
Finally, there are logical places in the merchandising category where adding these processes makes sense, like “4.3.1.1 Develop procurement plan (10281)”. Following APQC’s MECE and HFD rules, it is easy to identify tasks beneath this activity related all of the various supply chains. This is simple way to identify the processes, talk about it with colleagues/partners, and identify what doesn’t belong in this space. Other organizations may simply add content to the existing framework elements such as defining the policies, processes, and standards for dealing with aggregating purchase information across all of the retailer’s channels, in “2.5.3 Maintain customer master data (16597)”.
When organizations begin to adapt the framework add their own processes, content, and benchmarking information to the existing structure, it becomes their backbone. Now the organization doesn’t have most of its processes identified—all of them are documented. The result may be just what’s needed to compete in this new retail world.