Retail Task Management – A Comprehensive Guide

The contemporary retail operations management refers to a framework of regulating functions that encompasses best practices in reporting, tracking, in-store & back office processes within its operations. Efficient Task management helps achieve your objectives promptly with a complete trace of historical actions . It can detect, advise and act on actions in a timely fashion, thereby simplifying the operations. Put simply, it has a goal of regulating multiple business functions to ensure compliant execution of business functions in-store. At a high level, task management entails two scenarios:

• Recurring tasks- These are repetitive normal business operations of a retail enterprise. This includes the regular merchandising, staffing, scheduling, budgeting, inventory and delivery operations along with maintenance related to housekeeping and auditing mechanisms.
• Ad-hoc tasks- These are the functions that the retailer has to undertake as a response to actions. These pertain to the implementation of alterations in policies, requirements for training and/or, mentoring and product related decisions.

The new way of retail task management aims at a comprehensive customer-centric perspective. There are numerous tasks related to that such as in-store merchandising, superior coordination between the outlets and the corporate offices, stock & inventory and regulation of the supply chain. Discrepancies in either of the functions results in distraction and confusion. This leads to stress and waste of frontline operators time thus taking their attention away from the tasks that need to be addressed.

Enhancing the Retail Task Management

There is no explanation needed in pointing the priority of safety protocols in these Covid times. This is an additional process the business now has to comply to along with the already complex processes to run their business. Also, the fierce business competition within the retail segment makes the whole process of ensuring effective outcomes difficult. There is a strong necessity for the following to be adopted as standards within the modern retail task management:

•  Clarity of purpose- The modern retail task management stresses on clarity and straightforward directives. This helps the workforce to perceive and execute tasks step-by-step without any confusion.

• Setting due dates- It is significant to realize that a systematic retail task management depends on prioritization of tasks. Moreover, setting up of due dates helps the workforce to render immediate preference to functions that are more important at the time.
• Centralization of tasks & communication- Execution by the in-store teams and the requirements of the corporate office need to be channelized into a single centralized platform to facilitate both communication and tasks. This will help store associates to perceive their tasks more clearly resulting in better experience for the customers.
• Application of task management software- The prime set of retail functions consist of customer engagement, compliance with Covid-19 guidelines, communication, staffing & scheduling, delivery & supply chain and inventory & control. All these individual aspects have to be set into motion simultaneously.

This can really overwhelm the workforce affecting operations grievously.  Appropriate task management software that can handle the perplexities of merchandising and audit can efficiently handle all the aspects leaving the customer associates to concentrate more on enhancing the consumer experience.

• Monitoring- Keeping a track of the overdue operations and following-up on completion rates are vital to the everyday retail operations. In this regard, automated retail management software can help in sending task notifications and getting feedback from the staff in real-time.

To keep pace with and adapt to the dynamic, volatile, ambiguous, uncertain and complex environment of the modern retail task management, it is important to realize and practice the best practices preferably with robust and automated task management software.