All posts by : enVista Marketing

While the president keeps saying “jobs, jobs, jobs,” supply chain managers are faced with some tough choices as they compete for talent in a draining labor pool.

According to a May 2018 Bureau of Labor Statistics report, the country has less than one unemployed person for every available job. The result for companies hiring in logistics and manufacturing is that workers are in short supply, and wages are rising to help fill positions.

The rising pay rates are long overdue, Brian Devine, senior vice president of EmployBridge, an industrial staffing company, told Supply Chain Dive.

In May 2018, an EmployBridge subsidiary, ProLogistix, compared the average hourly pay rates of logistics hires to the consumer price index, from 2002 to 2018. The firm found that between 2002 and 2014, wages were largely stagnant, increasing 5.5% over the dozen years. Since 2014, however, the market has corrected slightly, with hourly wages rising 22.6% from $10.61 an hour to today’s average rate of $13.01 per hour (not seasonally adjusted).

“We’re getting closer to where wages need to be,” Devine said, adding wages need to reach $14.10 an hour to keep up with inflation. But even at that rate, workers are “not driving a nicer car, not squirreling away more money in their 401k or taking fancier vacations, they’re just breaking even.”

Labor issues are top of mind for managers

The correction is not surprising for facilities managers, as it is a result of supply and demand dynamics related to a tightening labor market. Still, it has led labor management to reach new heights as a priority for the industry.

“Companies got used to not having to dig into their budget for pay increases for 13 years,” Devine said. “Now the increase paid last year isn’t enough to make them competitive this year or the next year.”

The industry-wide concern is reflected in DC Velocity and the Warehousing and Education Research Council (WERC)’s 2018 annual DC Metrics Survey. In this year’s edition, five of the top 12 metrics to watch were related to labor. By comparison, in 2016, not a single one of the top 19 top metrics was related to labor.

Tom Stretar, vice president of supply chain solutions and a labor management practice leader at Envista Corp. said overtime is a big issue for one manufacturing client. Last year, the client mandated overtime from its workers for 39 weeks – costing it a lot of money. This year, the manufacturer changed its schedules to offer weekends off, to help retain workers, Stretar told Supply Chain Dive.

By Jim Barnes

Today’s customers have more choices than ever and will choose to shop with retailers that make them feel valued time and time again. For those retailers that understand the customer’s happiness is the way to remain relevant, transforming digitally to deliver personalized, seamless customer experiences is a must.

Gone are the days of siloed advertisements and one-size fits all promotion. Fortunately, today’s opportunities to personalize online experiences beyond just a purchase are numerous.

So, what is digital retail personalization? Retail personalization is a strategy that seeks to build brand loyalty by presenting compelling experiences to customers based on their likes and wants. Personalization requires retailers to have a deep understanding of individual customers, which demands a strong data strategy. Retailers who get personalization right drive deeper customer loyalty while increasing sales.

In this article, we’ll look at seven tactics to enhance customer experience through digital retail personalization by establishing relationships using customer data, email campaigns, product recommendations and more.

Tactic 1: Favorites and wish lists provide digital convenience that permits customers to buy when they are ready to buy and makes reordering easy. They enable targeted remarketing, either through email or directly on the e-commerce page, complete with reminders and/or incentives to reengage with the customer to complete the sales process. Both are available in most e-commerce platforms or through additional third-party plug-ins.

Tactic 2: Customized microsites based on customer preferences
Customers will be drawn to today’s most popular products, and microsites enable retailers to easily spin up customized websites based on those types of customer preferences and order history to possibly upsell or complete a sale. These sites can be set to expire after a certain number of hours/days and can showcase items based on most clicked, reviewed, and/or purchased. Microsites have been shown to increase conversion by as much as 50 percent as compared to a typical website bounce-back link.

Tactic 3: Deliver dynamic, customized email campaigns to retarget
Leverage your CRM and marketing platform to deliver relevant, personalized messages and offers. Whether in the form of pop ups after a customer has placed an item in his/her cart without making a purchase, or targeted emails, most marketing platforms will allow a way to scale personalization based on customer data to offer the most relevant items, images, copy, and promotions to your customers.