Topics in Retail Management

Merchandising Solutions
Current Challenges: Intensifying competition, expanding boundaries, complex global supply chains and fickle customer loyalty have led retailers to reinvent their business strategies to stay ahead. Getting the right product, at the right place, at the right time, and at the right price has become a basic mandate. Retailers need to differentiate their business by adopting technology for devising micro-merchandizing strategies, incorporating master data management and optimizing functions like Category management, Revenue management, Shelf & Space planning among others. What TCS Provides: TCS understands the challenges faced by retailers today and helps them achieve revenue growth and improve profitability by providing solutions needed to adapt to the changing dynamics in merchandising planning and execution.

RFID
Current Challenges: Radio frequency identification (RFID) is helping retailers around the world improve customer satisfaction and increase sales by tracking goods and assets across the globe from the point of manufacturing to the retail point-of-sale. RFID technologies can provide traceability and real-time control to retailers helping them meet customer and regulatory requirements while improving efficiency and profitability across retail value chain. What TCS Provides: TCS helps retailers access real time, consistent and accurate information through its RFID technology enabled identification and tracking solutions. TCS solution offerings integrate capabilities and assets across the entire RFID stack, enabling it to deliver complete solutions from developing the business case to the deployment and testing of the hardware and software.

Supplier Relationship Management

Current Challenges: Changing consumer demands, eroding brand loyalty, and complex supply networks mandate the need to optimize costs, increase efficiencies and find ways to get the right products in the right place at the right time. Effective Supplier Relationship Management must be maintained and built in order to increase efficiency, control and collaboration with global supply networks. What TCS Provides: TCS Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) solutions enable companies to synchronize supply with demand and leverage strategic sourcing to achieve cost efficiency as well as customer satisfaction. From implementing sourcing strategies and efficient procurement processes to building strategic relationship with the suppliers, TCS helps retailers meet end-to end SRM challenges.

Multi channel Retailing

Current Challenges: In order to realize a multichannel vision that encompasses catalog, web, stores, call center and kiosks, enterprises need to integrate and synchronize operations across retail value chains and optimize every touch point to deliver seamless customer experience. By integrating merchandising, order fulfillment and inventory management processes and delivering a consistent value proposition across the retail channels, retailers can realize business objectives while increasing customer share. What TCS Provides: By leveraging people, technology, processes and infrastructure, TCS works closely with retail enterprises to help deliver seamless customer experience across various channels - from enabling cross-channel inventory management to synchronizing offline and online value proposition.

Retail Stores
Current Challenges: As the most critical customer touch points and ultimate brand ambassadors, retail stores need to realize efficiencies across chains, often at a global level. Incorporating operational efficiencies and enhancing quality of service through technology solutions that include category management, advanced merchandising strategies, and customer relationship management solution can help retail firms win customers and stay ahead of competition. What TCS Provides: From loyalty and customer relationship management to work force management solutions, TCS helps Retail firms provide seamless service to their customers. TCS helps retailers implement smart store technologies including personal shopping assistants, kiosks, and digital signage to enhance customer experience.

Supply Chain
Current Challenges: To be successful, businesses need to establish, manage and maintain a dynamic supply network: a series of supply chains that a firm can rapidly assemble and adjust to respond to unique customer requirements. By optimizing the many facets of Supply Chain Planning, Sourcing & Procurement, Inventory Optimization, Warehouse Management, Logistics Distribution & Transportation and Supply Chain Integration, retailers can improve efficiencies and enhance productivity. What TCS Provides: From supply chain transformation and Integrated Demand and Replenishment Planning to logistics and warehouse management, TCS helps retail companies manage seamless supply networks. Leveraging its domain expertise and network delivery model, TCS incorporates process improvements across the various facets of a supply chain while remaining cost effective.

Master Data Management

Current Challenges: As a result of mergers and acquisitions and the opening up of new markets and sales channels, retailers find themselves in an extremely fragmented IT landscape. Data stored in disparate systems and databases and inconsistent classification of data across units make getting an accurate view of business a daunting task. Data synchronization is rapidly becoming imperative. What TCS Provides: TCS works with retailers across the globe to help them gain a consistent view of their customers, suppliers, products and employees. From Data Strategy and consulting, Global Data Synchronization to Customer Data Integration and Product Information Management, TCS helps enterprises with end-to-end Master Data Management Solutions.

Case Study 1: Amber Food Court, Siliguri

About Amber Food Court The Amber Food court is located in "Savin Kingdom". Savin Kingdom is one of the biggest amusement and Water Park in Siliguri located in the heart of the city, near the Hill Cart Road (Tenzing Norgay Road). Being the only Food Court in the park we have to handle a great number of customers every day. Our elaborate menu especially framed to satisfy customers include wide range of North Indian, South Indian, and tandoori cuisine with verity of appetiser soups & salads. This is actually a fast food counter and we have to deal with our customer with rapidity and satisfaction. The food court is divided into two separate parts, but we have only one billing counter. It is basically a prepaid counter; the customers have to pay the bill before they have their food. We have over 50+ employees and the increase in customer number leads us to increase the number. Every day over 1500 bills were created. At the end of the day the customer's satisfaction is our greatest achievement and every day we are creating more and more satisfied customers. Challenges of Amber Food Court Being located in the heart of the city, we have to deal with a large number of customers every day. To maintain the customer pressure at peak time we have to deal with them with a faster transaction rate. Slower transaction rate is a barrier between the customer satisfaction and profit.

We were using manual billing and manual coupon system. Customers used to pay their bills and we used to make their bills, KOTs and coupons manually. But at the peak time it is become impossible to maintain such age old procedure with the increasing customer pressure. At the day end we have a heap of bills to calculate all them manually.

Decrease transaction time Increase footfall Fast training of our staffs (We have running business so can't afford more time to spend on staff's training)

Fast reporting system Increase management Customer satisfaction Solution by RanceLab We were asked to buy computers, POS printers, and RanceLab FusionRetail 6 software. RanceLab also provided us full training about the software. Currently we were running...

Coupon based transaction (customer pays bill and software generates the coupons at a very fast rate) Software also prints KOTs for specific kitchens, separately. We just feed the items in the software and it prints the KOTs in respective kitchens automatically. By using this methods transaction time decreases tremendously Now we can see the reports whenever we want

RanceLab provided a very good, efficient and fast Installation and training about the software Now I can restrict the users from viewing the reports and they can concentrate on their specific jobs Above all our customers are very much satisfied with the newly installed system, now they don't have to wait longer for their Foods Benefits Derived using RanceLab With such systems in place, we managed to increase our business, now we have...

Happy Customers Happy Supplier Happy Staff

Increased Margins Increased staffs and kitchen Management Increase Raw materials Management

Case Study 2: Madhulika Happinezz

About Madhulika Happinezz Established in 1984, Madhulika Sweets is a renowned name Dhanbad. Engaged in offering premium quality sweets and namkeens. Over the years the company has maintained this tradition and people have kept coming back for the finest quality sweets and namkeens. Presently they have four sweet shop around the Dhanbad city and also started giving franchise sweets stores in and around Dhanbad. They have excellent infrastructural facilities, cooking utensils, refrigerating machines and other equipment to prepare a wide variety of sweets and namkeens to keep and maintain their freshness and purity. Have separate unit for quality control. Madhulika have team of highly dedicated 150 staff. Challenges of Madhulika Happinezz Increase Business growth

Fast customer service Increase customer satisfaction Centralize system control by the Admin

Up-to-date inventory as per location Supplier management Theft protection Wastage control after daily sale Madhulika usually aims at an industrial & public location or site with heavy footfall to generate good profits from fudge. However, when combined with traditional sweets, the opportunities are more varied. They have huge range of sweets & namkeen items and also have lots of supplier for raw milk. Management or Owner invests lots of time to maintaining location wise stock, purchase management payments, sale, party order delivery etc. That's directly effect on business growth. Solution by RanceLab RanceLab FusionRetail 6 Enterprise Edition Consultancy & planning

Integration with add-on hardware Service Support & Training We provide RanceLab FusionRetail 6 Enterprise Edition for control multi-location. The software have the each individual sector Purchase of raw material, product recipe, production consumption and auto update inventory as per sale of Finish products. We introduce Barcode & weighing scale in warehouse & also in shop for accurate inventory update. Now process was very simple & useful for user. After finalize the preparation of sweets & namkeens, they update the stock unit to inventory using production- consumption entry. Now data is automatically distributed to all location of madhulika. Now manager of each location know the status of stock for a particular item. So management can easily track sale & stock with production. Our strong report section gives lots of reports to management to figure out the business status. Like stock discrepancy report, productionconsumption report, no sale, no stock report, profitability report etc. We also advice to buy highly configure SERVER for HO & POS station for each location and fast internet connection in each location for fasting data transfer. It will help to fast the billing cycle.

Suggested Topics for PhD in Mangement

Operations Management
Topics within operations management include exploring models for natural resources or for nonprofit organizations. Productivity and time flow, logistics management, inventory management and location theory and revenue management are all elements of this larger topic.

Information Management
A relevant and hot topic today is electronic commerce. In studying this, students look at both the business and technical issues of the subject. Areas within this topic include security and regulatory issues of electronic merchandising and payment, global implications of e-commerce, new models of business-toconsumer and business-to-business transactions and marketing within the e-commerce world.

Management and Organizations

Within this topic, students study the sociology and psychology of the behavior of individuals, groups and organizations and the environment in which these interactions occur. Social processes are at the heart of this topic. Students usually conduct both qualitative and quantitative research.

Accounting Management and Information

This topic involves rigorous and in-depth study of statistics and economics. Focusing on accounting research, econometrics, finance, economic theory or mathematics courses provides a basic for further exploration of the subject. The research within this topic is quantitative and statistical.

System Dynamics
The topic of system dynamics analyzes the behavior of systems, to understand and influence how things change over time. Within this, students can focus on system principles, the dynamics of the economy and industrialization and policy analysis. System dynamics are relevant to such diverse subject areas as economics, information systems and political science.

Marketing
Disciplines relevant to this topic in management include behavioral science, operations research and statistics. Topics in marketing address the issues that will enable organizations to provide goods and services that satisfy people's needs. Understanding the psychological basis of economic and consumer behavior as well as focusing on how to determine, provide and measure customer satisfaction are just two of the many research areas within this topic.

International Management and Organization

Within this topic, research includes a focus on international and socially responsibility management. Global issues of business sustainability, strategy and organization are in the curriculum alongside cross-cultural management theories and strategies. There may also be an opportunity for an international research exchange within the Ph.D. program.

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Write down your professional interests, what you're most passionate about and list them in order of priority. Consider what research you conducted in the past or what you've always wanted to research. Also ruminate on any special projects you worked on or managed, such as studies or service on professional association boards.

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Select one or two of your professional interests and conduct searches in a university library, preferably one that subscribes to EBSCOhost or ProQuest. Conduct a separate search for each topic: a general and a specific one for peer-reviewed publications only. Look for other similar studies or publications on the subject. Peruse the research to ensure that you might contribute is workable and will add to the existing body of research.

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Pin down your ideas to one or two, and base them on interest as well as the results from your library search. Consider the number of studies already conducted in the area or in a related area, and what the results were. Doctoral ideas must have theoretical grounding yet be original enough to add to existing knowledge. If it is determined that your work would only duplicate other work, move on to the next topic and weigh those results in the same way. Consider the number of peer-reviewed articles and studies, what was studied and how you can add to that existing body of knowledge.

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Select two topic ideas that seemingly allow room for new research and that you will not be duplicating. Present these ideas to your dissertation mentor (if you have one) and with your committee, or discuss it with a professor or advisor from a college or university you are interested in attending. They can give you good insight on the merits of the topic by letting you know of their own knowledge and interest in it, as well as if other students have worked on similar ideas in the past.

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Select the best idea for you, weighing in your research on the topic and input from a mentor, committee members and your own passion for the topic. And then prepare to throw yourself into it.