Creating space. Saving time.

0800 743 584

The Value of Standardisation in Retail

Like most business processes, standardisation comes with a whole range of benefits.

With years of hands-on experience in the retail industry, we have been able to identify many of these specific benefits and outline how they can help improve your businesses processes, productivity, and profit. Some of the advantages include Predictability, Consistent Quality, Streamlined Compliance, and Reducing Waste.

Predictability

Past performance is the best predictor of future performance. Standardising your back of house storage allows you to receive predictable performance and therefore allows you to predict results. This is beneficial for several reasons.

Firstly, standardization will enable you to accurately predict the cost and capacity of any given storage space. This is a key tool when expanding your business to new locations and planning the layout.

Secondly, standardization ensures that you know what to expect from your supplier. This includes the quality of the product, the service levels, maintenance requirements, and basic trouble shooting. Using one shelving system across all you stores will help produce predictable results, allowing you to plan and avoid any surprises when you come to fit out your next back of house storage space.

Consistent Quality

Consistency is key, especially within the retail sector. Customers want to be able to visit a retailer in Newmarket and the same retailer in Queenstown and be presented with the same product offering, values, and level of customer service.

As McDonalds has taught us, consistency is only achieved through implementing standard procedures throughout all aspects of your operation. In this context, standardising your retail stockroom storage offers unique benefits for you and your customers. Using the same storage system across all your stores will allow you to create relevant and effective SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures). These can then be introduced and mandated across all stores to streamline processes and improve quality.

Specifically, some of the things that you will be able to standardise would be:

  • Inwards goods procedures
  • Stowing and picking procedures
  • Stockroom layout (which items are stored close to the door, which items are stored further back)

Standardising these processes will help you to improve the consistency of your customer experience leading to greater customer loyalty and increased revenue long term.

Streamline Compliance

Compliance can create a mountain of paperwork for Operations Managers and Health and Safety Officers.

Standardising your compliance procedures can help you to reduce the amount of paperwork without affecting your standards of safety. Having one storage system across all your stores will allow you to create one rule book for safely working in retail stockrooms.

You will also be able to work off one maintenance checklist to ensure that safety and compliance are upheld. This is a stark contrast to having multiple systems, and therefore multiple procedures across your stores which can be dangerous and costly.

Reduced Waste

The fourth, and possibly most attractive, value proposition for standardisation in retail is reduced waste. Reducing waste in one store will modestly impact profits. Reducing waste across all stores can revolutionize a retailer.

Using one storage system in all your back of house areas will reduce waste in a number of ways. It allows you to exchange components and resources within your network.

For example, should some components become redundant in one store, these can be reused in another store. Moving staff between stores and sites can result in time lost to inductions and training. Using the same system in every store will reduce these induction requirements and help you to further reduce waste.

 

How do you standardise?

Standardisation in retail storage is already used by many retailers. They work with a single supplier that they trust to refit their stores nationwide, and internationally.

At Shelving Depot, we have developed our operation to cater to these requirements. We cover all New Zealand with our own install teams and have partnered with Bowen Group Australia to be able to offer installation throughout Australia. Reach out to one of our team to see how we can help; we can refer to you various retailers who we currently deal with so you can understand our offering and value.