ATLANTA – Implementing new technology can appear expensive and intimidating to smaller retailers, but they can overcome those perceived hurdles with a technology game plan that improves efficiencies.
A retail pricebook manager, a vendor who offers back-office support and a representative of a major supplier will explain how small operators can improve their business operations by using planning and technology tomorrow during the “Tech Efficiency for the Small Operator” education session.
“Even if you are small, you can use a lot of things bigger companies do. You can gain a lot of efficiency for your business,” session moderator Donna Perkins said in discussing the use of technology. “You just need a plan and business partners. As long as you can accomplish those things, don’t count yourself out of the game.”
The first step in the process is to standardize departments and price look-up codes, which improves processes even if stores are not scanning barcodes, said Perkins, pricebook manager for Maryville, Tennessee-based E-Z Stop Foodmarts Inc.
“I’ve been down that path. That one small step of standardization makes moving forward within technology in our industry much simpler,” she said. “Scanning is a big hurdle to a lot of smaller retailers. If you standardize ahead of time and your plan is well thought out, it is doable, but you can’t go into it thinking it will be easy and then quit the first time you hit a roadblock.”
NACS also offers resources to educate retailers about pricebook, category levels and electronic data interchange (EDI), Perkins said, “If you are a NACS member and you are not using the resources NACS has available, you are wasting your membership.”
Gregg Peele, president and CEO of CMI Solutions Inc., a technology vendor, said there are actually advantages to being a smaller operator, such as being able to quickly make decisions at the store level.
“When I look for efficiency, I want to do what is appropriate for the task and that particular operator. As a tech company, we have to be sensitive to not have too much red tape for someone who does not want it. We have to provide the ability to receive inventory from vendors and make sure they can update the
prices without any delay,” Peele said. Software systems can be hosted off-site and easily accessed by smaller retailers, and IT support can be outsourced to reduce overhead costs, he added.
Liz Sertl, senior manager of global strategy and standards for Coca-Cola Customer Business Solutions, said small operators could become more efficient by using standards, such as EDI and NA XML file formats that are the technology foundation of the c-store industry. Using EDI can help facilitate the best practice implementation that saves time and resources for tasks such as checking in products and invoicing, she said.
“In the past, the smaller retailers have not thought they had the ability to do this, but many times it is much easier to implement this for small retailers because there is not as much red tape,” Sertl said. “For us, it is a much more streamlined process. I have worked with retailers on what kind of efficiencies they can get in their systems by using things like a pre-delivery notice so they know what will be delivered to the store and at what price, and then receiving an invoice about what happened at the delivery.
“We want to let small operators know that by implementing technology they can streamline their processes. It is low-hanging fruit that both their suppliers and technology partners should be able to handle.”