From Looking Digital to Being Digital: The Impact of Technology on the Future of Work Such edge-centric decision-making More recently, each store has been given A distinguishing feature of 7-Eleven’s means that employees who are at the access to a Mobile Operation Terminal, edge-centricity is the fact that humans 16 frontlines of the organization can have the commonly referred to as a MOT. A MOT remain very much “in the loop.” Availability information, the tools, and the authority is a wireless specialized table that gives of this much data at the hands of sales with which to make decisions and, in each sales associate data about sales associates doesn’t necessarily guarantee some cases, to formulate strategy. And, trends and inventory levels of each SKU at better results on its own. So 7-Eleven has rather than chaos ensuing, the rest of the their store, as well as other relevant data taken further steps to improve odds of organization will accommodate and learn such as impending threats to the supply success. The first step is a cultural change. from this improvisation, even replicating of given products. MOT uses visualization Sales associates are now trained to place certain practices elsewhere. techniques to show highly granular data “sales forecasts” as opposed to “sales that can be used to forecast sales for the orders.” The former emphasizes the need Consider 7-Eleven, Inc. the international next ordering period. The effort to balance to evaluate data and make a conscious and chain of convenience stores. Nearly a central and local paid off for 7-Eleven, better-informed forecast (judgment) while decade ago, the company implemented a making it one of the most successful the latter refers to the traditional practice global IT system to centralize inventory convenience store chains in the world. of repeating last week’s order. information and to consolidate its supplier base. In today’s terms, it was hardly a In an effort to accelerate the development In addition, to foster responsibility revolutionary effort. But what distinguished of innovative, customer-focused products and ownership, 7-Eleven has moved to 7-Eleven even then was its goal of and merchandising, the company has “Certified Order Writers,” that is, store sales optimizing its supply chain while allowing begun sharing shopping cart-level data personnel who are trained to write orders store managers and employees to capitalize with an expanded network that includes and can advance to run part of the store. on their knowledge of local markets in corporate procurement staff, suppliers, These individuals are assigned specific order to generate additional revenue. store operators and their employees. categories of each store. As a result, they The common database—described as can gain deeper expertise in the line-up Specifically, transactional data transmitted “one version of the truth”—provides of the products offered in that category. from point-of-sale terminals to a central unprecedented visibility into what items The sales associates can better understand data repository gave 7-Eleven the ability to should be stocked and supplied to local local-market demands for products in their 17 identify purchase and restocking patterns— stores. Such moves are a signal that categories, form hypotheses about it (for information that was key for company 7-Eleven and companies like it are example, “I think there may be demand buyers to gain bargaining leverage with becoming increasingly digital by moving for larger packaging of barbecue flavored suppliers. At the same time, the system information, decision-making responsibility, chips”), and then validate it using data allowed store managers to customize their and innovation to the edge. tools at their disposal (“how has this item orders to account for local conditions. fared in other stores?”), so they can make a decision as to whether the demand is worth the shelf-space. Sales associates Sales associates are now trained feel a sense of ownership about their categories and their performance. To to place “sales forecasts” as opposed to “sales orders.” 24 | Accenture | Copyright 2014 Accenture. All rights reserved. ©