Supply Chain

Qurate Retail Group (QRG) announced several initiatives designed to better position its HSN and QVC U.S. businesses for long-term growth. Most important is the formation of an integrated business unit called QXH, which Qurate said will ensure an aligned approach to the U.S. market. As part of the transformation, Qurate will eliminate 350 positions by the…

As part of an ongoing $1.2 billion supply chain upgrade, Home Depot has started same-day delivery across the U.S. The home improvement retailer had already been using trucks to deliver large items such as building materials from stores in a day or so. Now, aided by startups Roadie Inc. and Deliv Inc. in its top 35…

The latest Gartner Hype Cycle for Supply Chain Planning Technologies report predicts that three of the advanced analytic types — predictive, prescriptive and cognitive — are five years to 10 years from mainstream adoption. Other research, such as the Analytics Strategies Study conducted by Supply Chain Insights, shows that 4 percent of respondents have implemented…

E-commerce is a runaway train with no slowing in sight. Nearly eight in 10 Americans now shop online to the tune of $453 billion in sales. Clearly, Amazon.com has been the biggest catalyst here. Free, two-day shipping has completely reset consumers’ expectations around the realities of speed and cost of delivery, a big reason why…

Almost every weather-related headline in the media or corporate annual reports focuses on the associated negative impacts for organizations. And there’s a lot to report: in 2017 alone, there were 330 catastrophic weather events, 31 of which each resulted in damages of more than 1 billion USD. Even "normal weather" impacts nearly every industry on…

Try this on for size: In 2017, there were $351 billion worth of returns in the United States retail market. Putting this figure in perspective, were that dollar value the revenue of a retailer, it would be the second largest behind Walmart (Walmart is at $363 billion, with the second-place retailer, Kroger, at $110 billion…

Walmart is testing the use of storage and retrieval robotics, called Alphabot, to increase the speed of online grocery order pickup, according to a company blog post. The technology, which was developed in collaboration with retail automation company Alert Innovation, is being installed in a section of a Salem, N.H. supercenter, which will also be a dedicated…

In episode 156 of Total Retail Talks, Matt Reynolds, co-founder and president of Indigenous, a retailer of organic, fair trade and sustainable fashion, discusses the brand's commitment to being socially responsible, steps it has taken to be more environmentally conscious, and the business benefits associated with this approach.

Learn how the right e-commerce platform impacts multiple business areas, from supply chain to customer service and more!

There are multiple departments within a retail organization, so which are most important? If we’re equating worth to cost — i.e., the annual salaries of employees within each department — then supply chain executives are most critical (see chart below). This was just one of the findings of Total Retail's recently released 2018 Salary Benchmark Report,…