Is Your Retail System Like an All-Star Pitcher or Hitter?

Those of you who are bleary-eyed from staying up watching the All Star baseball game last night may know what I mean. The pitchers ruled last night --- mowing down hitter after hitter. Even A-Rod struck out twice (not including the strike out his wife’s divorce attorney blew by him last week).

As a Yankee fan, watching a team this year without a strong pitching rotation is painful. Think about it…in the early era of baseball, the hitters ruled the game. Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, and Mickey Mantle all hit for power and average. Now, however, the rules of the game have changed and the pitchers rule the game.

One pitcher, directing 9 batters…talk about centralizing and managing your game. Don’t you wish you had that kind of control in your business? The good news is you can.

A centralized Pricebook is similar to an All-Star pitcher. At your home office, a centralized Pricebook is the one place where all prices are validated and sent to the stores which puts you in complete control. It is the one place where you can control your inventory and cash flow. The store managers do not decide which products you buy and at what price. You do. Yet many c-store operators are still playing by the old rules and not controlling their businesses from a central location.

Not using a centralized retail inventory management system is analogous to allowing the batter give the pitcher his signals for each pitch. Are you kidding me? As a technology shop, change is a part of our everyday business and we strive to be ahead of the curve every hour of every day.

In a game as traditional as baseball, for better or worse, times have changed. How about your business? Are you running it like the pitchers who faced Babe in 1927 or are you running like the pitchers of the 2008 All Star game?