1. CONTENT
• Introduction
• Insight Corner:
Developing a Dashboard of
Key Performance Indicators
• On the Go - SPICE projects
• Hot Jobs
Insight Corner
Paul M. McLeod
Senior Consultant, Merchandising
SPICE Technology Group
Developing a Dashboard of
Key Performance Indicators
I’ve seen and worked for many retailers over the
years who ran their businesses by the seat of their
pants. While this may have worked in the past
(I can’t imagine when), it must be replaced by a
more sophisticated operation utilizing today's
advanced technologies to help guide your
business.
But where on earth do you start?
You need to know what drives your
business...
Consider for a moment the hundreds of reports
and millions of data elements that are generated
in your business by merchandising, marketing,
fulfillment and financial systems. From all that
data, what is valuable for you to know and help
run your retail business? What are the key
performance indicators that will tell management
about customer satisfaction and service levels;
whether you’re on sales plan by channel; how
your inventory is performing; what your cash flow
needs will be; and so on?
Establishing effective management reports, KPI’s
(key performance indicators) and metrics has
long been a challenge. As companies grow and
continue to add new channels and titles, KPI’s
and Business Intelligence (BI) are key to helping
top management keep a finger on the business
without micro-managing. One concept worth
exploring to help guide your business is a “KPI
dashboard” – a series of visual KPI’s that reflect
the key performance metrics from each
department. How can your business benefit from
introducing this concept? By improving customer
service, increasing top line sales and ultimately,
profitability.
BI strategy and Reports
development
Scan based Trading for
seasonal items
Transportation
management
streamlining
3PL integration
Supplier EDI rollout
Specialty staffing &
recruiting
Supply chain score cards
Master Data /New Item
Article Lifecycle
CIO - upper mid
market retail
Director, Insight
& Analytics
District Managers
SAP -
Project Managers
Manager, eCommerce
SAP - FI/CO, SCM,
SD Analysts
Forecasting &
Replenishment
Analysts
Distribution Managers
I take great pleasure in introducing our newsletter
designed for leaders interested in enhanced
enterprise performance management. This
newsletter will bring a panel of experts together
who will share more about how departmental level
performance is being improved across
organizations.
We will also tie these newsletters to the general
enthusiasm in the user community for metrics
management via our popular Executive Round
Table on Enterprise Performance Management
discussions. I hope you will enjoy these series and
find it helpful to use in your organization.
We wish you all the best for 2012.
Neel Sharma
Managing Partner
SPICE Technology Group, Inc.
December 2011
Enterprise Performance Management

2. SPICE Technology Group, Inc.
2425 Matheson Boulevard E,
8th Floor, Toronto, ON L4W 5K4, Canada
ContactUs
1-888-400-7950
www.SpiceTG.com
excited@SpiceTG.com
SPICE World SPICE Connect SPICE Force
What is a KPI Dashboard?
By dashboard, I mean a collection of KPI metrics
located generally online and in one viewing platform
that reflect the overall performance of the business
including customer service and satisfaction, sales
analysis against plan and overall profitability. When
highly summarized, they give management an
accurate and timely picture of the business. In order to
add value, the information systems also need to
provide detailed answers (the ability to drill down) as
to why the various indicators are reporting what they
are. You’ll also have to determine which indicators
need to be plan, projection and/or actual.
As an example, Merchandising metrics may include
category projections (sales actual to plan); top 20 and
bottom 20 selling items (by brand or category); net
contribution to profit; contribution analysis for new
versus repeat items and core products versus
non-core products. Ultimately, your KPI dashboard
must provide insights in to what is affecting
profitability. Sales are obviously important, but I’m
sure you can think of a retailer who had strong same
store sales results, but went out of business. This is
partly caused by a lack of ownership to the sales
number (reality check – we all own the sales number).
But there is no question that EVERYONE owns profit.
Even a basic KPI dashboard can provide the answers
to where profitability is slipping. Are you achieving the
ROI expected in buying or marketing? What about
operations? Are staffing levels driving sales? And my
personal favourite, shrink. It isn’t your customer
robbing you blind of profits; it’s your internal
processes for receiving and distributing goods and
monitoring your suppliers for “fallouts” (shipping less
than what was ordered but billing for the full amount).
With EBITDA numbers at less than 5% for a typical
retailer, it should become clear that you need a tool to
provide guidance.
What are the Benefits?
There’s an old engineering principle that states,
“What hasn’t been measured can’t be improved.”
Establishing this mindset will encourage each of the
departments to improve their analysis and internal
reporting. But one of the most beneficial results that
will come is the ability to benchmark internally
against yourself season-to-season and year-to-year.
Through continual process improvement, your
organization will improve the efficiencies that drive
profitability and customer satisfaction and retention.
There is no question that we are living in a period of
great uncertainty and turmoil, so it’s more important
than ever to maximize your company assets and
manage your business with facts and figures – and
you can do this by implementing a KPI dashboard of
key enterprise performance metrics.