Attention Shoppers!

The day after Thanksgiving in the US has long been known as Black Friday, the dark name for what is generally considered the biggest shopping day of the year (truth be told, the Saturday before Christmas often wins this honor). According to the US-based National Retail Federation, “For some retailers, the holiday season can represent anywhere between 25-40% of annual sales. In 2009, holiday sales represented 19.1% of total retail industry sales.” This same organization reported that more than 468,000 seasonal workers were hired to support the holiday rush. How many procurement departments at the different retailers are involved in managing this crush of a contingent workforce and what technologies are being employed? Procurement’s involvement in the management of contingent labor and professional services is a growing trend; an understanding of the VMS (Vendor Management Software) providers like Fieldglass, Beeline, and ProcureStaff and the MSPs (Managed Service Provider) will be increasingly important.

Supply Chains

What happens over the next five weeks will determine a great many things for most retailers. The same holds true for the companies whose products fill the retailers’ shelves – companies in the CPG, media/entertainment, and consumer electronics industries to name a few. While the holiday sales percentages may not be quite as high for the product companies as they are for the retailers, the stakes can be quite high. For example, having the wrong product mix on the shelves can be deadly. Not having enough of the right products in different stores can be painful. Since the US “Cash for Clunkers” program, which drove an unnatural spike in the demand for new car purchases in 2009, we have witnessed numerous cases of suppliers failing to ramp up production for short-term demand, particularly in the electronics industry. This is not all the fault of the suppliers who, in aggregate, took huge hits when demand fell off a cliff at the end of 2008 and 2009 and they were stuck operating at or near full capacity. These suppliers remain hesitant to ramp production and their customers are hesitant to hold more than the absolute minimum levels of inventory – this is a potential powder-keg for some companies. And supply chains. We’ve discussed seasonal supply chain problems here on CPO Rising and in other publications like this Forbes story. When the different publicly-traded companies report earnings for this current quarter, it will be interesting to see how many corporate executives either credit or blame their supply chain for their results. Here is an earlier CPO Rising article about one CEO who has done this.

Sales – Attention Shoppers!

On the biggest sales day of the year, we just wanted to offer a quick reminder to all interested parties, particularly those working on next year’s budgets, that Ardent Partners is very much open for business. If we haven’t been in recent contact, it is because we have been very focused on our research and writing. We would love to connect and share what we have been up to and discuss opportunies for collaboration in 2011. You can see some of Ardent’s services here. Drop us a line. Operators are standing by.

Tagged in: Ardent Partners Research, CPO Shop Talk, Solution Providers, Suppliers, Supply Risk