Retail for Business Analysts and Management Consultants

What is the aim of this course?   

Retail has become very competitive. We have the rise of e-commerce and multichannel, and buyers' behavior has also changed drastically. This leads to lower margins. As a Business Analyst or Management Consultant, you have to be able to analyze the Retailer you work for fast and find possible improvements. This course will help you drastically improve your knowledge and skills in optimizing Retail business through a series of practical cases. It is designed for people who want to become consultants, business analysts, or have to run and optimize Retail business on a daily basis. In the course you will learn 6 things:   

1. How to analyze Retailer and find low-hanging fruits   

2. How to build the business model of the Retailer in Excel in order to see the big picture and see how specific KPIs impact the profit   

3. How to optimize Retailers' operations   

4. How to behave in a multichannel surrounding (when you have also e-commerce operations)   

5. How to expand your business into new categories and markets   

6. How to analyze in-store engagements   

There will be also many growth hacks that Retailers use.   

The course is based on my 15 years of experience in Retail as well as a consultant in top consulting companies and as a Board Member responsible for strategy, improvement, and turn-arounds in the biggest companies from Retail, FMCG, SMG, B2B sectors that I worked for. I worked for retailers in home improvements, pharmaceuticals, vending, kids-products, convenience stores, electronics, wood products, and many more so what you will see in this course are observations drawn from many industries.  I have carried out or supervised over 90 different performance improvement projects in different industries that generated a total of 2 billion in additional EBITDA. On the basis of what you will find in this course, I have trained over 100 consultants, business analysts, and managers who now are CEOs, Operational  Directors, COOs, Investment Directors, Directors in Consulting Companies, Board Members, Customer Insight Managers, Data Science Managers, etc. On top of that my courses on Udemy have already been taken by more than 182 000 students. The course you will take has been taken also by people from EY, McKinsey, PwC, Walmart, Booz Allen Hamilton, Dell, Walgreens, and many more as a part of Udemy for Business.

I teach through cases so most of the lectures are case studies showing some business problems solved in Excel. There will be also an overview of the main techniques used in optimizing and running retail. To every lecture, you will find attached  (in additional resources) the Excels shown in the lecture so as a part of this course you will also get a library of ready-made analyses that can, with certain modifications, be applied by you in your work.   

Why have I decided to create this course?   

Retail has become quite complex and there is a shortage of business analysts and consultants that have a good understanding of how to approach retail. There is a lack of knowledge on how to get a broader view of the retail business and at the same time to be able to go deep into details. Even people working for years in retail have problems with seeing the whole picture and being able to find potential savings. Therefore, I have decided to create a course that will bridge this gap. This course will transform you into a retail expert in a relatively short time and help you see all the elements of the business. The approach you will see in this course was tested on humans and I have seen tremendous positive results. Thanks to this course you will become a priceless member of any team that is doing strategic and operational improvements projects in retail. It will help you land a job not only with retailers but also with consulting firms, and private equities investing in retail.   

To sum it up, I believe that if you want to build or to find improvements in retail you should master the techniques shown in this course. That is why I highly recommend this course not only to consultants or business analysts that have to advise their customers but also to retail managers, and analysts already working in retail or in PE.

In what way will you benefit from this course?   

The course is a practical, step-by-step guide loaded with tons of analyses, tricks, and hints that will significantly improve the speed with which you find and analyze production. There is little theory – mainly examples, a lot of tips from my own experience as well as other notable examples worth mentioning. Our intention is that thanks to the course you will know:   

1. How to analyze Retailer and find low-hanging fruits   

2. How to build the business model of the Retailer in Excel in order to see the big picture and see how specific KPIs impact the profit   

3. How to optimize Retailers' operations   

4. How to behave in a multichannel surrounding (when you have also e-commerce operations)   

5. How to expand your business into new categories and markets   

6. How to analyze in-store engagements

You can also ask me any question either through the discussion mode or by messaging me directly.   

How the course is organized?   

The course is divided currently into the following sections:   

• Introduction. We begin with a little intro into the course as well as some general info on retail 

• Basic analyses that you should perform. In the second section, I will discuss the basic type of analysis that you can use to better understand the business that you work for. Here you will find the potential low-hanging fruits   

• Retail Business Model. As a business analyst or consultant, you may be asked to model the whole business in Excel. I will show you in this section how to do it and you will get ready-made models. I will also show you how to model e-commerce. 

• Optimization of in-store processes – case study. In section 4 I show you how to optimize processes in the store. I will use here a real case of a company from the home improvement / DIY sector. You will get also the model we used to calculate costs   

• Business Hacks used by Retailers. It is always good to look at what others are doing. Here I will show you some hacks used by other retailers   

• Expansion. At some point, you will start considering expansion. I will show you in this section how you can expand your retail      business and how to decide what to do   

• Multichannel. As e-commerce has been a significant distribution channel traditional retailers were forced to transform into multichannel players (operating both in traditional stores, the offline world as well as online business) Here I will show you the main challenges and how to tackle them   

• In-store engagement and productivity analysis. If you have data on the customer behavior in the store you can get nice insight and craft a better strategy to grow your business. Here I will show you examples of such analyses that we did with Retailnext – a system to collect data on customer behavior in the store.   

You will be able also to download many additional resources:

• Excels with analyses shown in the course

• Presentation of slides shown in the course   

• Links to additional presentations and movies   

• Links to books worth reading