You’ve probably heard the terms Agile & Scrum being thrown around lately and thought that they weren’t applicable to you, being in the retail industry. And ten years ago, you may have been right. However, with the impact that technological advances are having on the sector, Agile is becoming more & more relevant to making sure your business not only keeps up with your online competitors but leads the way for retail across all platforms.
But what are we talking about when we talk about Agile? Well, in essence, Agile is about working faster and smarter and eliminating as much risk as possible. And Scrum is a framework that allows you to work in a truly Agile way.
According to Fitch, one of the worlds leading brand and retail consultancy groups, Agility will become the benchmark of retail businesses potential for success and its long term health as a business proposition.
Christian Davies, Fitch's Exec. Creative Director for the Americas, delivered a talk at the National Retail Federations Big Day in January 2016 focused on how important Agile is for reviving the retail industry. I’ve included this talk above, but in this post, I want to focus in on a couple of the main points he made.
During this talk, Christian describes Agile as being “all about taking these experiences we create at retail, and making them more adaptable, more responsive and more nimble”. The ability to adapt quickly to ever-changing shopper demands and behaviours can revolutionise your business, giving you the edge with your customer. Knowing what they want and giving it to them as soon as they want it.
Another point that Christian makes is that retail today isn’t delivering what’s expected by their new target market; millennials and Generation Z. He believes that retail stores need to adopt Agile to mirror the shopping styles of millennials and Generation X as “they live their lives at an increasingly frenetic pace, driven by nothing short of a new definition of time - mobile time” and that retailers need to change their lifecycle to maintain growth. Agile & Scrum encourage fearlessness against change - it’s about trying hard, failing hard, and picking yourself up if it doesn’t work and then doing it all over again!
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