In my previous post in November, I highlighted the importance of speed and agility to retain and gain competitiveness.

The other day, we had the opportunity to have an open strategic exchange session with one of our key retail customers. We learned that speed and agility has other dimensions linked to it as well.

Said customer is a happy user of IFS’s end-to-end solution spanning ERP, POS and assortment-planning and they have excellent enterprise architecture – supporting their future growth and competitiveness.

Leading advisors on business strategy have made several benchmarks and are reportedly impressed about how the customer has managed to break the cost-of-curve as compared to expansion and peers. They have done so proficiently that the IS/IT-department is scoring high on internal performance.

Obviously, this is a great tribute to the work of the customer’s line of business, and their IS/IT-department; and, surely, IFS Applications and its ecosystem has been a contributing factor as well.

So, after an express implementation and multiple business benefit realization projects to eliminate complexity and support sales growth, the customer is now ready for the next step – accelerating establishment into new markets looking to almost triple sales.

Increasing the global reach also implies increased focus on sustainability and CSR accountability.

It is in this area that we got a new perspective on how our solutions provide for the ultimate enabler – a solution and partnership that adapt with speed and agility also provides for the foundation for sustainability.

How? It’s simple – an efficient supply chain that eliminates waste, and capital coupled with sales effectiveness provides for goods to be manufactured, and transported to the end-customer only according to actual demand. Eliminating excess stock returns adds to a sustainability that is difficult to achieve by other measures.

This all makes sense – a high volume retailer has a fast-moving supply chain and any lack of optimization of sales and stock levels adversely impact on sustainability and environmental impact.

We are happy to have customers recognizing that IFS’s ability to handle speed and agility, while providing for a supply chain engine that eliminates waste, also brings with it other strategic and important dimensions, such as CSR and sustainability.