It has been a VERY busy fall for us here at RSR, and between all the travel, conferences, speeches, custom projects and future planning for 2012, we’ve also managed to produce quite a bit of our signature product: benchmark research. In fact, this year, we’ve published several reports that are brand new topics for us, the most recent being an entire benchmark focusing on how retailers plan to empower the store manager. His time has come.

The rapid adoption of consumer-facing technologies such as smart mobile devices and social media has fundamentally changed the shopping dynamic. Although the preponderance of sales still flows through physical stores, consumers’ paths to purchase have become complex and information-rich. And today’s consumer hasn’t waited for retailers to provide in-store customer-facing systems and tools — she now carries the store in her purse, and is armed with rich content about a retailer’s products and services that often is better than the corporate-provided information made available to store employees (including the store manager). And with instant access to friends via social media, consumers are part of a community of people who offer opinions about every retailer’s offerings that are far more influential on buying decisions that retailer-provided content. In short, consumers are in control of the relationship, and retailers need to react.

On the other hand, in these hard economic times, retail enterprises continue to put pressure on store operators to control expenses, particularly their largest controllable expense: labor. So while consumers are demanding more relevant solutions to their lifestyle needs wrapped in excellent service, store managers are hard-pressed to provide the levels of service that those consumers demand, or that are even as good as that provided before the Great Recession. It’s a 21^st Century retail paradox: how to create a whole new level of service while squeezing operational costs?

The questions that this study sought to answer are, how is the challenge of the empowered consumer affecting the job of the store manager, and how are retailers positioning their store managers to better meet that challenge?

Unfortunately, for many retailers, the road to getting store managers into their rightful new position of power is fraught with roadblocks. In aggregate, many retailers tell us they just have too many other priorities with which to compete (31%, Figure 1).

At the same time, their existing technologies and infrastructure are currently standing in the way of being able to empower the store manager any further than they already have (also 31%), and conflicting priorities set by different departments, which are then sent to stores, present problematic issues as well (27%). Both of these data points are even more of an issue for FMCG and GMA retailers (43%, not pictured), and serve as top inhibitors to retailers in those product segments.

Winners tell us they have an additional problem with which to contend: the best performers report — at an inordinate rate — that they are far more challenged to provide store managers the information they require to be more effective in a timely fashion. Forty-two percent of Winners (vs. only 7% of average and lagging respondents) cite this as an impediment to giving the store manager better technologies and tools. In fact, it is Winners’ top inhibitor. What we can conclude from this data point confirms much of what we’ve already seen in this report: Winners understand that the store manager’s role must evolve much more so than do their average and underperforming competitors, they have invested more effort to facilitate that change, but are consequently challenged to provide the necessary arsenal of tools and information with the speed required to be effective. For these forward-thinkers, the issue is not whether the store manager needs more firepower, it’s simply an issue of how to get it to him/her faster. When that speed-to-delivery challenge invariably dissipates, Retail Winners will be in a significant position of competitive advantage, pulling away from the pack with a more informed, involved store manager, and the differentiated in-store shopping experience such capabilities afford.

Speed And Testing

As a result, the key to that evolution resides in more near-real-time exception reporting, particularly for Retail Winners (64% vs. 50% of average and lagging retailers).

Winners are also much more aggressive in their use of pilot programs in stores (50% vs. average and lagging retailers’ 29%). What’s interesting is that for them, the buck stops here: exception reporting and pilot programs are the only means by which Winners see great value to get past their internal roadblocks: Fast, accurate reporting (and the ability to test it in select stores) represents something of a holy grail to the best performing retailers. By way of comparison, average and lagging retailers see great value in a host of means — ensuring there’s a single point of contact between stores and other departments (57%), more involvement from senior management (64%), better internal training programs (64%) — literally across the board. This does not mean these retailers are grasping at straws, as all of the options they selected are solid business practices; it simply confirms that they are not as far along in the process as Winners, and have a long way to go if they are to catch up.

The full report in addition to examining the challenges retailers face, takes a deep dive into the technologies they see as most valuable to get them there.