The market for fresh products and agri-commerce is witnessing a huge transformation toward omnichannel operations. Now, consumers are looking for the swift delivery of farm-fresh vegetables and fruits through nearby stores or hyper-local fulfillment units. For fast-growing agri-tech platforms, it is crucial to gain market presence through speedy geographical expansion. However, operational bottlenecks are created by the scaling process for omnichannel operations:
- Non-standardized methods for setting up stores cause operational delays.
- Issues with inventory management and store layout change from region to region.
- There are many instances of confusing onboarding processes and different levels of performance among store employees.
- There is a lack of insight about the timeframes of operations in different states.
Changing the expansion strategy from a slow one to a fast one poses obstacles to creating a standardized way of going through each touchpoint from handing over the site to sending out first shipments.
1. Eliminating Expansion Delays with Standardized Store SOPs
When operational and other processes across the organization are broken down into fragmented segments or units, it leads to delays in traditional retail rollouts with store openings depending on various factors, including the way local teams set up processes such as temporary or ad-hoc setups. Spare parts come into play sooner rather than later. If we want to have a rapid rollout of a retail network, it would be necessary to have standard operating procedures (SOPs) in terms of layout design, shelving structure, types of cooling equipment, ways of receiving items, etc.
2. Standardizing Manpower Hiring, Training, and Deployment
Physical infrastructure is only half the expansion jigsaw. A business cannot get operational without a trained and dependable workforce. High employee turnover rates and different levels of skill among fulfillment staff members can result in delayed openings of a store.
Creating a uniform manpower system can help with this issue.
- Centralized Onboarding : This means making the training of store managers, cashiers, and warehouse personnel uniform.
- Role-specific Implementation : Daily checklists of operational procedures related to stock receiving, quality grading, or billing must be created.
- Quick Launching : A pre-run workforce pool needs to be created to staff a new place straight away.
3. Gaining Real-Time Visibility Across Network Rollouts
Executing launches of several stores at once in multiple towns requires strict project control. There is no live indication of opening dates, leading to delays in the launch process and exceeding budget limits.
Top agri-tech companies cooperate with supply chain process management experts such as Edgistify to implement the ready-made store launch template. Having complete control over the launch process and handing over all store opening logistics to partners, the companies can reduce the time gap from store opening to operating their stores to less than a week.