Profitable Task Management

I started my retail career as a sales associate.  Every day, my manager provided all of us with a list of tasks to complete.  When I became a manager, it was my job to provide the list of tasks.  However, analyzing all the printouts to develop the list was time consuming and took away from my ability to work on the sales floor and actually supervise and train my associates.  Also, it was very difficult to see the direct results of my actions, given that I only worked with a handful of printed reports.

In today’s retail world, more and more companies are using task management systems to minimize challenges and to manage more tasks in less time.  Not only does task management allow you to get more things done, it allows you to work collaboratively and efficiently.  An ideal solution would identify and prioritize the most profitable areas of improvement, but also reduce erroneous tasks, also known as false positives.

Unfortunately, task management has one important missing component:  prioritization.  Within any profession, new issues always emerge and need attention.  In retail, this is no exception.  When you are managing 25 associates and millions of dollars’ worth of merchandise, you look for anything that can help you out and save time.  But the following question always arises:  Am I using my time wisely?

Additionally, retailers struggle with corporate oversight and compliance requirements in the day-to-day operational tasks at the store level.  Currently, many retailers still rely on paper-based or email-based systems, which depend heavily on store management for task execution and monitoring, with little feedback to corporate management.  These inefficient systems force stores to sift through large quantities of communications to determine what actually pertains to their store, which leads to overworked management and staff, low customer satisfaction, and confusion, all resulting in increased operating costs.

The ideal solution is one that not only identifies and prioritizes the most profitable areas of improvement, but also reduces the probability of false positives.  Using time wisely means working efficiently and minimizing unnecessary tasks.

Profit amplification combines the efficiency of task management with the best practice solutions that enable retailers to solve problems quickly and efficiently.  The elimination of false positives, using patented pattern recognition to identify opportunities and best practice solutions to select the appropriate inefficiencies to correct, will improve a company’s overall efficiency, leading to increased profits and decreased operating costs.

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