Performance Management

in the Retail Industry

Achieving Superior Corporate Performance

AUTHORS: Christine Mullie, Russ Hill

C O N T R I B U TO R S : Bob Bunzey, Cortney Claiborne, Sagarika Jaganathan, Dorit Shackleton,

Derek Stobbart, David Townley

AU DI E NCE: Retail Professionals

Section Heading
Executive Summary

On a daily basis, retailer managers are confronted with a variety of high-impact decisions
that must be made as quickly as possible in response to a variety of problems including
fraud, out-of-stocks, ad misprints, employee scheduling crises, and customer service issues.
At the same time, dwindling margins have resulted in the reallocation or reduction of labor.
Managers cannot possibly respond to everything, so priorities must be established.

Over the last few decades, a variety of systems and technologies—such as human
resource, point of sale, and inventory control systems—have become available to help
retailers set priorities and make tough decisions. Unfortunately, retailers now rely on
multiple systems that often operate on a standalone basis. Information is abundant but
resides in disparate silos—making it difficult for employees to access and share as well as
for executives to use in decision making.

For example, marketing managers, merchants, and operations managers in a given

organization are often making decisions based solely on their individual roles—and the
limited information available to them—and may not necessarily be acting collaboratively. In
the worst cases, one manager may be working from information that conflicts with that
presented to another manager, such as a report that has not been updated to reflect the
most recent transactions. This can lead to individual functional areas of the company acting
independently of one another, and possibly even in direct conflict with each other.

What still remains elusive in the retail industry today is the ability to integrate—both
technically and functionally. By integrating their technologies and processes, retailers can
optimize their most valuable resources—the time and efforts of their employees across all
functional business areas. A major step in this direction is for retailers to provide the right
people with the right information—structured in such a way that they can easily see when
there is a need to take action. An integrated performance management system can help
accomplish this.

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 Performance Management Systems

Simply put, a performance management system is the process of using information to achieve
superior corporate performance. For retailers it means having the information to monitor
corporate and store performance, quickly take action, and improve operational efficiency.

There are a variety of other terms in use today—such as Enterprise Performance

Management (EPM), Corporate Performance Management (CPM), Business Performance
Management (BPM), Strategic Performance Management (SPM), Business Performance
Calibration (BPC), and Business Performance Intelligence (BPI)—that all basically refer to
this same process.

A key performance indicator (KPI) is critical to any performance management system. A

KPI is the measure of performance of an activity that is critical to the success of an
organization. KPI’s will differ depending on the nature and objective of an organization, so
you must carefully select which ones to use.

Unfortunately, some organizations may identify hundreds of KPI's, making the key
description essentially false. Another problem is when retailers fail to implement consistent
KPI’s among various functions. For example, a retailer may have sales volume as a key
indicator for operations, while one of its key merchants is focused on gross margin percent.
This leads to conflict, as the operations team may want to reduce price as one method of
driving sales volume, but this price reduction will by definition reduce the gross margin
percent of the sale. It is also critical that the KPI’s for each functional business area support
the achievement of the overall corporate objectives.

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Fully-Integrated System Offers
Significant Benefits
Role-Based Access to the Right Information

Role-based access to information is the ability to customize the information employees are
able to see based on their functional role in the organization. For example, the sales
associates on the floor in a store may be able to view their own sales results versus
objective, whereas the store manager has the ability to access the sales performance for all
sales associates in the store.

In most retail operations today, the managers across various functional areas and within
various levels of the operation have a limited view of the information actually available within
the organization. This often makes it difficult for them to access critical information that might
help them improve their job performance. For example, it is common—in many retail
organizations today—for store managers not to have access to real-time sales information.

This point is driven home by an IBM study conducted in the summer of 2003. IBM
conducted six retailer-specific workshops to gain an understanding of the business
capabilities a store management team would want from new technology. Although the
retailers participating in the study spanned different retail sub-segments—and included
retailers from both North America and Europe—the store management teams in these
organizations consistently identified “access to information” as the number one challenge
inhibiting stores from carrying out their objectives of maximizing sales and controlling
variable expenses. With an integrated performance management system, retailers have
increased role-based access to consistent information across functional business areas, so
that employees—including store managers—have the information they need to perform
their job effectively.

Ability to Link Metrics and Objectives through the Depth

and Breadth of an Organization

Cross-organizational integration is the toughest and most fundamental requirement of a

performance management system. Because managers scattered across departments and
within varying levels of an organization may be working from personalized scorecards,
dashboards, and reports, it is necessary to have a system in place that can integrate all of
this to ensure all departmental and regional objectives are in synch with the overall
corporate objectives. By enabling managers to see the breadth and totality of company
operations, and by allowing the linkage of top-level business metrics down through to the
employees in the stores, and to site-specific operations, an integrated performance
management system can help retailers accomplish this monumental task.1

For example, by choosing “receivables less than 30 days” as a KPI for an accounts
receivable clerk, a retail manager is ensuring the clerk’s objectives fit with the corporate
objective of increasing profitability. By selecting “mispicks” in store distribution routines as
a KPI for a distribution associate, the manager is ensuring the distribution clerk is working
towards the corporate goals of maximizing efficiency and increasing customer satisfaction,
both of which also serve to maximize profitability.

1
Dr. Robert Kaplan and Doctor David Norton, “Putting the Balanced Scorecard to Work,” Harvard Business Review,
September-October, 1993.

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F U L LY- I N T E G R AT E D PE R F OR MAN CE

Timely, Actionable Metrics

Performance management does not equate to a post mortem of the previous month’s
performance. The metrics must be delivered in a timely fashion, and in a way that makes it
simple for managers to act upon them in near real time. Giving a store manager overtime
reporting after the close of the period does not allow him/her to make changes to improve
operational performance in that period, although staffing and scheduling processes may be
revisited to improve performance in subsequent periods. Overtime reporting that is timely
and actionable, such as reporting weekly, or a report showing associates with over 30 hours
midweek, could allow the same manager to shift the current week schedule and avoid
overtime expense. Ensuring timeliness of information is the critical difference between
performance management and performance reporting. Finally, in addition to having access to
timely information, employees must also be provided with the processes for taking action,
initiated by the performance management and supporting systems.

Meaningful Information

As margins narrow and budgets tighten, retailers are continually being pressured to do
more with less. A relatively small number of people must manage valuable resources. This
means there is limited time available for managers to analyze information, relevant or not.
And this is where a well-executed performance management system can offer a competitive
edge. While many retail managers are overwhelmed by vast amounts of data that must be
analyzed before they can take action, a performance management system presents its users
with only those metrics that truly impact the business. There may be 50 performance
metrics that could be managed at a store, but 10 drive 80% of the store profitability. This
holds true for most retail functions. If telephone expenses are less than 1% of store
expenses, they should not be reported as a KPI for the stores. Surprisingly, reports like this
are often found and prove distracting to managers, keeping them from focusing on more
important factors. In marketing, if only a small percentage of cost is driven by postage, and
there is little action that can be taken to impact postage once a catalog delivery decision is
made, then postage should not be a marketing KPI.

Performance management systems also address a retail manager’s limited time for
reviewing and analyzing data by capturing and summarizing critical information in
reports which are graphically presented in the form of dashboards, scorecards, graphs
and charts. At a glance, managers can assess a situation and take action. A store
manager wishing to compare holiday season sales results for the current year over
previous years might have to manually pull information from different reports and
databases to make the comparisons. But with an integrated performance management
system, the manager could quickly see from a bar chart that sales are abnormally low and
consider promotional strategies to boost sales for the current year.

Time spent reviewing and analyzing data can also be reduced by reporting or alerting
users to exceptions, instead of making them review a report to find the exceptions. This is
a benefit many performance management system vendors stress with traffic lighting or
ranking features. These features have now been taken a step further, and performance
management systems today can proactively alert users of issues, preventing them from
even having to log in to the system—unless there is a discrepancy that requires action.

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 F U L LY- I N T E G R AT E D PE R F OR MAN CE

In the overtime situation described above, if the store manager knows an alert will be
generated and sent to his handheld when there is any deviation from the plan—in this
case if associates have worked over 30 hours for the period—he/she need not bother to
log in to check on overtime.

Ability to Research Online

While it is true that information should be limited to what’s important and presented on
an exception basis, background information should be readily available to managers
whenever they need to delve deeper into a particular situation. If an HR department
finds—through an exception on one of its KPI’s—that organizational turnover has
increased dramatically, it needs to be able to drill down into the associated data to
determine which regions or departments have caused the increase. It may also need to
review which associates were terminated from which departments, as well as the causes
for termination in order to better assess the situation and take action. In many cases,
performance management tools will stop at the exception point forcing the user to spend
time accessing other systems to identify root causes of issues. Ideally, the supporting
detail should be available through an integrated performance management system, for
viewing at the user’s discretion.

Ability to Benchmark

Whether merchants are comparing product profitability by channel, or district managers

are comparing store performance, or executives are evaluating profitability of similar
business units, functional managers need to be able to view performance comparatively.
This enables various parts of an organization to share best practices.

A district manager may wish to compare the labor cost-versus-planned exception report for
the individual departments within a given store, but with an integrated system can also
now determine which store in the district, is the most productive. Upon further
investigation, the manager may be able to pinpoint certain operational practices, such as
accurate forecasting and workload balancing, that have helped this store keep labor costs to
a minimum. The manager may then choose to implement these practices throughout the
other stores in his district, significantly reducing overall labor costs.

The ability to compare across stores, departments or product lines also allows managers to
better profile or segment their customers. This in turn allows them to anticipate and meet
customer needs more efficiently. By comparing sales of, for example, Hispanic foods in a
region, a manager can get a better understanding of which stores should try expanding
their product offerings in this category and which stores should consider cutting these
product offerings altogether. By making similar comparisons of gourmet foods sales,
specialty foods, or even specific cuts of beef, retail managers can understand who the
customers are in specific geographic regions and what they’re likely to buy. This type of
comparative information can help managers make effective decisions regarding product
sourcing and selection, stocking, as well as advertising and promotional decisions.

P E R F O R M A N C E M A N A G E M E N T I N T H E R E TA I L I N D U S T R Y 5
 Attributes of a Successful Performance
Management System

A successful performance management system requires

several key technological components.
Ability to Integrate Architecturally

The reporting product must be able to integrate with a variety of systems, including
relational and multidimensional databases. Although most retailers would like to have a
central data warehouse with all relevant transactional data summarized into pertinent
metrics, the reality is that most retailers do not. As a result, the technology used for
performance management should have the ability to connect to various types of systems
and enable integration on the front end. Users will not see the underlying disparate
systems. In this way the goal of an all-embracing data warehouse can be achieved over
time, and reports can be transitioned from operational systems over to the data warehouse
as this evolves. The metrics delivered through the initial reporting system can also act as a
guide to the data warehouse designers to help them prioritize areas of development.

Easy Access and Use

The performance management tool must be extremely user friendly and intuitive. For a
truly integrated solution, it must be accessible and usable for everyone from the CEO to the
department managers in each store, since each and every employee should be working
toward the company objectives. While many software vendors like to demonstrate a flashy-
looking front end with lots of bells and whistles, what is most critical is providing intuitive
navigation for the end users to gain insight into the situation and to take action.

Flexibility

The performance management tool must be flexible. The metrics and various perspectives
for each user group must be able to be customized. As one moves down the chain of
command from the VP of Store Operations, to the regional, district, store and departmental
managers, each level will have its own set of KPI’s it is working towards, as well as access
to only that information which is relevant to the responsibilities involved at that level. Each
manager will see dashboards or reports relative to the objectives he is assigned such as
daily sales, contribution of profit, sales versus plan, by district or region, sales for this year
versus last year, this week versus last week. Also, the method for calculating various
KPI’s—such as the calculation for the cost of a product to determine its contribution to
profit—might be different across product categories, and the performance management
system must be able to incorporate these differences. For security purposes, the
performance management tool must enable unique views based on login identification.
Finally, the interface must be user-developed to prevent the need for IT involvement each
time the business needs change.

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Building A Successful System

Identify and Document Current Measurements

The first step in creating a successful performance management system is to identify the
purpose and metrics of each report and alert. This activity typically requires a task force, or
an external consultant (if there are insufficient internal resources) who thoroughly
understands the retail industry. Often end users are not forthcoming in presenting all of
their current reporting practices, and this might require the consultant to use advanced
investigative techniques to get everything out in the open. In either case, each and every
report must be documented. This initial catalog of reports is a good starting point in the
necessary process of reviewing as a group, the metrics currently in use today. This helps
you determine which ones are relevant and should be included under the new performance
management system and which ones are not and should be eliminated.

Identify and Agree Upon Corporate Objectives

The next step is to get executive agreement on corporate objectives. There are a number of
approaches that can be used for this phase, but the key is to have management buy in on
company goals.

Link Functional Metrics to Corporate Objectives

Retailers—often percieved to be independent thinkers and entrepreneurs—find it difficult

to link functional metrics to corporate objectives. Field operations personnel may tend to
distrust corporate managers, percieving them to be far-removed from the real world
happenings in the stores, and merchants sometimes distrust store operations because their
objectives do not match. Retail functional managers must work together in situations where
store operations, field operations, corporate, and functional business units overlap, to
ensure that KPI’s do not conflict.

For example, marketing, merchandising, and operations must all work together to achieve a
successful product promotion.

A promotion will most likely fail when:

Marketing’s goal is to increase sales volume

Merchandising is focused on gross margin and wants to stock only limited quantities

of the advertised product because of its low margin

Operations is trying to save on labor by reducing the time spent on tagging the

promotional product, thereby not appropriately signing the promoted merchandise

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B U I LD I N G A S U CCE S S FU LL SYSTE M

The KPIs for each group must be in complete alignment with the company’s operations.
In the above example, the merchant’s KPI may be restated to gross margin return on
investment (GMROI) instead of straight margin, making the promotional item more
appealing because it will turn faster. The operator’s labor budget needs to include
promotional readiness time, and the operator needs to somehow be credited for the related
sales to encourage participation in the corporate programs.

Scenarios like this are all too common in retail where it is vital that functional areas work
together as a whole, but where conflicting objectives prevent them from doing so. A truly
integrated performance management system will encourage this behavior, provide
invaluable insight across departments, and reward managers for cooperative efforts.

Revisit Performance Metrics Periodically

Business priorities will shift over time to reflect changing market conditions and customer
needs. These shifts will inevitably change the focus of a company, so corporate metrics
should be revisited at least annually during strategy discussions. In addition, the constant
monitoring of performance results against metrics should identify situations where a local
metric is driving behavior that is counterproductive to the corporation.

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A System from IBM and
Business Objects
IBM On Demand Workplace with Business Objects
Retail Performance Management

Business Objects and IBM have teamed up to develop a solution that integrates
performance management software from Business Objects with IBM’s On Demand
Workplace for Retail solution. The joint solution provides stakeholders—within the various
functions, levels, and operations of a retail organization—with immediate access to key
information, so they can monitor store performance and improve operational efficiency.

IBM’s On Demand Workplace for Retail is a comprehensive suite of software and

hardware services that creates an environment where employees dynamically interact with
business processes, other employees, partners, suppliers, and customers to more efficiently
get their work done. Through an integrated portal, it provides a common interface to a
variety of back-end systems, simplifying employee access to content, applications, people,
and processes.

The On Demand Workplace solution, using Business Objects for Retail Performance
Management, provides a framework for making performance information actionable. It
dynamically assembles supporting applications in response to alerts and reports provided
by the performance management software. It also supports access to systems from a variety
of devices, including POS, PC’s, handhelds, Cell, and IP telephony devices—so teams can
have access anytime, anyplace.

Business Objects, the first business intelligence vendor to be certified for IBM On Demand
Workplace, provides role-based key performance indicators, reports, and analytics across an
enterprise, including sales, inventory, workforce management, HR, and financial systems.
The data in the back-end systems is transformed into graphically rich information and
delivered into the On Demand Workplace portal via executive dashboards, scorecards,
graphs, charts, and alerts. The result is immediate access to vital store performance metrics,
and the ability to drill down into the data to understand the underlying factors driving the
business, to make better decisions.

P E R F O R M A N C E M A N A G E M E N T I N T H E R E TA I L I N D U S T R Y 9
 Conclusion

Retailers are facing unprecedented budget and performance pressures. The key to survival
is staying ahead of competition. And that means ensuring each and every employee has
the ability and the incentive to make good decisions in line with the overall corporate
direction. This can be extremely difficult in a large organization that has multiple
departments, levels, districts and regions, and where information resides in a variety
of discrete information systems.

By implementing an integrated performance management system, retailers can ensure the

managers across the various functional business units have real-time access to the
information they need, to make effective decisions. An integrated performance
management system can also help senior executives ensure that functional, departmental,
and employee objectives are in alignment, and that corporate priorities are continually
reflected throughout the organization.

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P E R F O R M A N C E M A N A G E M E N T I N T H E R E TA I L I N D U S T R Y 13
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