Charisma Glassman is Senior Partner & Global Head of Retail Advisory at Genpact, helping global brands transform the end-to-end value chain.
In grocery retail, the rules have changed. Amid global economic uncertainty and rising inflationary costs, margins are tighter, disruptions can hit fast and customer expectations are shifting in real time.
I believe the greatest opportunity and risk for grocers lies not in the aisles but in the operating engine that moves goods from supplier to shelf to screen. The key is to have a clear view across the grocery value chain so you can identify where friction, waste and disconnects are silently eroding value and where bold reinvention can restore your resilience and unlock growth.
Mapping Eight Priorities To The Grocery Value Chain
Grocery has traditionally run on scale, bulk buying, steady movement and predictable demand. But in today’s world of fragmented channels, fluctuating labor and unpredictable supply, that linear model can easily break down. To overcome these challenges, I recommend orchestrating your value chain with a view of six core stages: source, plan, move, sell, serve, and support. Each stage offers unique opportunities to unlock efficiency, improve agility and deliver value—not just to shareholders but to suppliers, employees and customers alike.
Within these six stages, there are eight priorities to consider:
1. Source: Strategic Sourcing And Supplier Collaboration
In my experience, procurement today is less about negotiating prices and more about enabling resilience. It’s important to build strong relationships with your suppliers based on real-time data sharing, collaborative forecasting and AI-driven contract management. This can help you ensure availability, agility and alignment even when conditions change.
2. Plan (Part 1): Product Lifecycle And Category Management
Planning starts with what products make it to the shelf—and why. Consider using AI tools to optimize assortments by region; refine private label strategies; and dynamically adjust categories based on demand, shelf space and profitability. Instead of trying to offer everything, focus on offering what performs.
3. Plan (Part 2): Forecasting And Inventory Planning
Forecasting is another important aspect of the planning stage. I’m seeing more and more grocers applying machine learning to anticipate demand fluctuations and automatically adjust inventory levels across their stores and fulfillment points to help prevent waste. And waste in grocery isn’t just what’s thrown away; it’s also poor shelf life management, mistimed markdowns and lost labor efficiency. By using predictive tools to forecast spoilage, optimize replenishment and automate pricing decisions, you can cut losses, lift margins and reinforce your sustainability goals.
4. Move: Supply Chain And Fulfillment
The modern supply chain is expected to be fast, visible and responsive. For example, digital control towers can give grocers real-time oversight of inbound shipments, DC performance and stock flow. This visibility can allow you to spot and address disruptions before they impact availability. Similarly, real-time platforms can allow you to view inventory health, margin movement, labor allocation and demand shifts across channels, allowing you to course-correct at the speed of business.
5. Sell: Store Operations And Labor Productivity
While physical stores are still essential, they can also be smarter. Equipping your teams with mobile tools that prioritize in-store tasks, automate routine activities and optimize scheduling based on predictive foot traffic can allow them to get the most value out of every hour and shift. I have found this to be an effective way to combat rising labor costs and turnover.
6. Serve: Digital Commerce And Last-Mile Fulfillment
Online grocery is here to stay, but profitability still lags. Some grocers are tackling this issue by reengineering fulfillment models to introduce micro-fulfillment, dynamic slot pricing and AI route optimization as ways to cut costs and enhance service. Similarly, balancing in-house and gig labor can allow you to transform the last mile from a margin drag into a competitive edge.
7. Support (Part 1): Finance And Value Recovery
The realm of finance is stepping out of the back office and into the heart of the value chain. Automation is accelerating close cycles, analytics are exposing margin leakage and performance dashboards are helping teams act on insights in real time. Finance should no longer be reactive but rather operationally strategic.
8. Support (Part 2): Workforce And Shared Services
Another tactic that is redesigning talent and support functions for speed and scale is enterprise-wide enablement. Siloed transformation won’t get you where you need to be, so consider how you can create cross-functional coordination between your sourcing, planning, finance, operations and digital sectors. For example, by managing your HR, finance and procurement through shared services, you can create consistency while freeing up resources to focus on transformation. True transformation means integrating decisions, data and accountability across the chain, not just optimizing within them.
The Bottom Line
Transformation and operational excellence in grocery aren’t simply about deploying new technologies or digitizing legacy workflows. They involve rewiring your operating model, aligning your value chain and doing so with the clarity that comes from both inside knowledge and outside perspective. In the intelligent era of grocery, I believe success will belong to those who break down siloes, operate across ecosystems and lead transformation across the entire value chain.
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