£150k per year cost saving, 300% efficiency improvement in picking and packing, and 600 hours saved per year in customer services. Just some of the incredible benefits presented by Sanderson customers at our Lean Retailer round table event. 

Alongside the need to continually innovate and drive business growth, how can retailers find new ways to manage operating costs and deliver improved efficiencies across their businesses? The theme of our event focused on how adopting lean practices in retail can deliver measurable benefits and seriously boost bottom line profitability.

Sanderson customers shared first-hand the lessons learned and benefits achieved in running their own lean initiatives. Nick Brine from Foot Shop outlined the objectives for their lean warehousing project including; reducing stock holding, better utilisation of existing warehouse space, improving throughput and lead times, and removing inefficiencies from existing processes.

The results of a five-day lean process evaluation and follow up action plan delivered outstanding results, culminating in an annual cost saving of £150k. And rationalising the size of their shoe boxes delivered 25% more shelf space.

What is Lean?

Lean focuses on the elimination of information waste. Recognised every day scenarios include production of reports which nobody reads, levels of data re-entry or duplicate reports, personal filing systems and bottleneck departments.

Neil Feddon shared his five-stage process for implementing lead practices and top tips for ensuring the investment pays off. The biggest barriers to increasing efficiencies is making the time - getting people to stop and removing themselves from the process to change it.

Starting your Lean journey

The overarching theme across all presentations was that all businesses can benefit from lean process improvement and deliver increased efficiencies across key areas:

• Manage customer expectations through exceptional customer service
• Reduce stock holding and cut lead times through more efficient operations
• Increase integrations and manage a wider supply chain
• Reduce costs - increase profitability
• Develop a single version of the truth across the business

For more information, request a call with jason.colbridge@sanderson.com 

Discover the importance of a single multi-channel retail system by downloading our guide – Chain Reaction: How to maximise your margins in the connected retail economy.