Startup Guide: A Roadmap Towards Achieving Sustainability in Retail

The year 2020-21 has been tough for the entire retail industry in the country. Yet, while coping up with this pandemic we have realized that for a business to sustain all odds, it needs to have a system in place that works as a growth mechanism. It also helps you to analyze the pros and cons of the various industry factors.

Sustainability in retail implies continuous monitoring of both your internal and external environment. It also means working on it to achieve maximum success. At the same time, it is important that the entire system and working of your internal processes are streamlined and technology-driven. This will help keep up with the changing marketing needs of the people. At the same time, it is critical that you continuously monitor the customer feedbacks irrespective of the success and sales. It is important to remember that there is always room for improvement.

Here are some key points to keep in mind to achieve sustainability in the retail sector:

All businesses should adopt advanced technologies

We are living in a digital world. So, relying on traditional forms of business management will only lead to stagnancy and interrupted growth. Therefore, as a business owner it is imperative to apply newer forms of business management. These include CRM, Inventory Management systems, ERP systems, etc. Managing customer relationships, inventory or resource planning for the businesses can all be done using advanced tools and data analytics mechanisms that are more accurate and time-saving.

Customer Feedback Management systems

There are times that with the growth of the business, brands often neglect customer feedback. This usually happens at grassroots levels. In such cases, the primary source of feedback remains to be the one provided by the managers; thus, non-filtered and often manipulative. Therefore, a robust electronic customer feedback system is very important to keep a tab on customer satisfaction and needs. One cannot deny that customers are the most important stakeholders in a business and everything else is secondary. So, customer feedbacks must involve monitoring a change in the various company processes and policies.

Innovations in processes as well as the product

Gone are the days when businesses could survive without innovating. Now business especially in retail must innovate both internally as well as externally. Internal innovation refers to innovations which the customer directly cannot see like an innovation in technology that reduces the time of an internal process from 30 minutes to 10 minutes which saves cost. External innovations are those wherein the customer can view the transformation like that in packaging, cover, branding etc. Both internal and external innovations lead to enhanced processes, lower costs, and higher customer satisfaction.

Consistency

The retail business must be consistent in all its efforts. Merely conducting promotions boosting of your brand being costumer centric, environment-sensitive etc., will not help unless the same is reflected in every action of the brand through the minutest of the details like packaging or how you treated your employees during the pandemic. A brand is built over years of consistent efforts. Even one inconsistency can lead to a big blow to your business. Therefore, it is important ton how you develop your company policies and implement the same with not just the external but also the internal audience.

Strong Cybersecurity team

With the advancement in technology like cloud computing and machine learning, the chances of data theft have also increased drastically in the cyber space. Phishing, Sim Jacking and other forms of cyber thefts have become highly common. It is a huge threat to the security of both your finances and secured documents. Therefore, just like securing your physical assets it is also important that you secure your cyber space with a help of a cybersecurity team that systematically installs the various cybersecurity tools for protection from illegal entities.

In today’s world having a sustainable toolkit for your company is extremely essential and even more important is the deployment of a process that keeps everything in check. A key suggestion is to keep evolving your processes on the changing technologies across the globe for a growth which is at par with your competitors.