You know the old joke about two people who encounter a lion. The first guy starts running and his friend shouts "you'll never out run the lion" only to have hear the furst guy call back "i know, but i can out run you!"....
Well, there are two types of retailer left today: The Quick and the Dead. Having identified the challenges facing Morrisons and Tesco, the news today (The Times, March 24th) from Leeds is that following a McKinsey review, there is a big shake up coming and up to 200 senior jobs will go.
In the face of industry turbulence and the impact of on-line competition, bricks and mortar retailers need to structurally rethink their cost model and leverage data and technology to deliver simpler, better, faster, cheaper for shoppers. Heads at the centre bad, hands in stores good!
This is going to push more work and cost towards suppliers - and they will have to adopt similar mantras to survive the financial repercussions.
Enter Virtual Reality. The opportunities to leverage ground breaking technologies to reset the clock on retail planning and operating time, costs and resource is here. The retailer who drives this technological advantage farthest, soonest, will have significant cost advantages.
It may not be possible to out-run the on-line lions forever, but there's a lot of room for survival - you just have to be quicker and smarter than your competition.
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