Q1: what are the key points that retailers should consider before commencing the procurement process for their logistics platform/components?

• Do they consider their supply chain and the optimisation of their supply chain to be core to their company’s strategic market leadership?
• Is it a strategic business issue or a specific operational challenge they are trying to address?
• Do they have the right mix of business, logistics and technology personnel, each with the right degree of experience, to maximise their supply chain re-engineering / optimisation effort?

Q2: what are the key questions that retailers should ask of all shortlisted options?

• Does the vendor understand my business, have relevant experience serving businesses like mine, and am I able to speak to existing customers of that vendor to understand their experience of working with them?
• How many people does the vendor employ that focus on just the supply chain and nothing but the supply chain, and how many implementation and support personnel does that vendor have, again that focus on just the supply chain?
• Does the vendor have a clear vision for its solutions underpinned by technology and functionality development roadmaps and how committed is the vendor to R&D?

Q3: what are the key points you should consider for your first year service review with your service/platform provider?

• Are we working well together as a team and are the vendor’s implementation & support teams as good as we thought they would be when we appointed them?
• Has the vendor helped us to deliver a quick win so the rest of the business understands why we’re making the investment we are with this vendor?
• How satisfied are our system users with the level of support provided by the vendor and is this level of support consistent?