The permeation of technology disciplines like Artificial Intelligence in our day-to-day lives has prompted retailers to adopt the latest trends to steer ahead of competitors.
Recently, several media sources were abuzz about the news that retail giant Amazon plans to open as many as 3000 cashierless convenience-stores by 2021. The idea of stores without cashiers is definitely an intriguing experience most shoppers would look forward to, but also help retail firms amass high revenue. The advent of digitization has prompted several retail organizations to create an omnichannel shopping experience that seamlessly merges brick-and-mortar stores with virtual shopping platforms. Experiential merchandising and creating omnichannel platforms are thus, undoubtedly two of the top priorities among retail enterprises worldwide currently and many organizations are seeking the assistance of vendor firms to devise holistic solutions to accomplish organizational goals. In the wake of the need among retail firms for unique solutions, our editorial board conducted a comprehensive study of leading merchandising solution providers globally. This edition of our magazine, a result of their efforts, is a compilation of Top 10 Merchandising Solution Providers from around the globe. We hope this edition on merchandising helps retail enterprises in pursuit of ideal vendors devising cutting-edge merchandising solutions.
spice™ Technology Group
Streamlining Supply Chain to Achieve Retail Success
Taking up the center stage, supply chain management is globalized more than ever, and is placed among the key levers of business success.
With the ecommerce giant like Amazon raising the bar for customer experience, and the highly technology-savvy customer, the rubber meets the road when retailers manage large and complex supply chains and struggle to keep up with the changes and the latest trends. Amidst these changes, one of the supply chain aspects that has risen high up the business agenda these days is replenishment management. “Businesses are aiming at shorter replenishment management cycles to restock items on their catalogs. The smaller and more frequent transactional flow merchandising groups, including order forecast, purchase orders, invoice flows, acknowledgment of orders going through the supply chain, adds to the complexity of the supply chain. Besides, ERP systems are flooded with the transactional data between retailers and the global supply chain partners, which is almost impossible to be processed in a manual environment,” says Neel Sharma, a well recognized technologist within the North American manufacturing, retail & distribution sectors.
In the midst of these deepest complexities, there is an opportunity for innovation to take over. As such, companies like spice™ Technology Group were born. With an aim to digitize the supply chain system, spice™ Technology efficiently assists companies in managing the flow of information between merchants, the supply chain firms to their global partner base. With Sharma at the helm as the co-founder and partner, spice™ Technology brings in comprehensive consulting services and rich expertise in merchandising, supply chain, eCommerce and information technology. Aimed at facilitating communication between the stakeholders involved in the retail ecosystem with the aid of a digital platform, spice™ Technology caters to large, mid as well as small-sized retail, brands, logistics firms and similar organizations. For instance, the company enables suppliers to partner with logistics organizations for supplying products to local retailers. In essence, the company connects trading partner data networks with buyer-seller organizations via a digital platform, leveraging affordable and easy-toimplement cloud technology. In an attempt to ensure a seamless transition of the traditional supply chain into a digital process, spice™ Technology offers four core solutions. Starting with Spice Connect™, the primary objective of the product is to digitally connect supply chain organizations with their trading partners for accelerating exchange of order-related information, utilizing the base systems and mobile applications. Spice Catalogue™ focuses on minimizing the time consumed in the process of standardizing the product data coming from the suppliers followed by the
integration of information into the core ERP and analytics applications that monitor performance metrics. This effectively speeds up the process of listing the products in-store and online, and start selling them within the stipulated time. Spice Catalogue™ is an essential tool to bridge the gap between the requirement and supply of product data in ERP and e-commerce websites. Added to that, Spice Trade™ assists organizations solve wholesale as well as manufacturing issues while attempting to sell products at small retail channels. “Brands generally engage in manual processes while dealing with small retailers. Spice Trade™ enables them to approach independent retail communities and setup an affordable omnichannel B2B experience,” states Sharma. Lastly, the spice™ Express model helps retailers and suppliers to develop a drop-ship network, thereby speeding up the process of catalog content onboarding, purchase order management, ensuring visibility of product shipment and scorecard management. spice™ Technology observes a series of processes while engaging with clients, attaining a better understanding of client requirements, and suggests best-in-class solutions for supply chain executors. spice™ Technology Group is currently making headways toward analytics with an objective to improve information flow in the supply chain and retail industry. “We are focusing on incorporating AI and machine learning to help clients handle and utilize the information in the cloud to manage supply chain processes better,” concludes Sharma.
