Big Companies Are Fun To Work For
I can’t comment directly on any Barnes & Noble actions as I am not authorized to speak for my employer. Decisions on what to stock, or what kind of relationship to maintain with vendors is well above my pay grade, and so even when served up a juicy tidbit — like B&N supposedly not stocking certain bestselling & perennial DC graphic novels because of the Amazon Fire getting first dibs on DC content — even when this is obviously the sort of thing I started this blog to talk about,
Well, I can’t comment.
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Instead, let us talk about a completely unrelated bit of business — the many ways my employer any large retail chain can communicate projects and directives to employees.
1. There are company intranets — basically web pages that don’t connect to the web — which can be used to store oft-retrieved documents, to announce (to employees) upcoming thematic or strategic shifts in business, to broadcast to employees information that is also being made available to the media (and public) via official press releases, and to basically cheer-lead about how Great It Is to be Working For The Company. [Smiles]
Alas, today was a slow news day — there were no store alerts on the intranet. I couldn’t discuss anything that might have been broadcast on this particular channel anyway, but I feel fine in mentioning that today was relatively quiet: silence is not yet privileged insider information.
2. There are many different scheduling software packages, at least a few of which are employed by retailers — these allow projects to be set up, either as monthly recurring tasks or one-offs, and can include attachments like book merchandise lists, directions on where to place, store, or dispose of merchandise, or even links to outside resources. These projects can go out to the whole chain, or only to a select group of stores, based on the actual displays and merchandise mix.
There are even times when we have to quickly execute projects — say, a publisher is being sued and we have to pull all the books, or a kids toy is found to contain lethal levels of lead, or we have to immediately change a bar code so items ring correctly at the register (failure to do so results in a fine from the Federal Bureau of Weights and Measures).
So we are set up to quickly disseminate an ‘emergency’ project and respond within 24hrs, should someone at corporate want us to.
Why, just today, I used a scheduling software package to assist me in setting multiple displays within my store: display tables, endcaps, even some unusual things like window signage and counter displays. Yep, I was logging on and off of the electronic planner all day, right up until 7pm, doing my job — merchandising displays, checking in all day…
In fact, if there were a situation that needed a quick response, I’d bet a theoretical merchandiser at the corporate level could not only set it up as a project, they’d also be sure an alert went out over the company intranet. It would be quite hard to miss in this theoretical case.
3. If a company chose, why, they could have their IT staff set up email accounts (under the appropriate co. .coms) so both corporate staff at HQ, along with regional field management, could use an established communication protocol [email, duh] to communicate directly to management in stores. It’s a system that gets abused a bit, in theory (as I can’t comment on my own experience using such systems), as it is obviously much easier to just send out an email — either from a desk or a smart phone — than it would be to set up a specific project on the scheduling system, or to clear a company-wide broadcast to go out on the intranet. A lot of crap can be sent over the system, from official spreadsheets and full reports on down to pesky details (individual isbns, or order requests, or availability from publishers) and of course: notices that there are either important messages on the intranet or specific projects that need to be checked off on the scheduler.
There are 3 ways to let store managers know there is a issue that requires immediate attention. In fact, at B&N we’ve often done something similar in the past 2 years and used all 3: especially to comply with the CPSIA. Even a large chain like B&N can move quickly if the right person initiates the project for the right reasons. One’s name and fingerprints are all over it, though: as author of the email, and the post on the intranet, and as the user that initiated the project in the electronic planner.
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Say you didn’t want to take “credit” though, or you didn’t have the clearance for this sort of company-wide action (at least not without a token sign off from, say, the folks in a different division actually responsible for that department). Some things can be taken care of right away, I suppose. Let’s say I work for the digital, .com division. Why, I can probably go into the inventory system and change the class of a few hundred books in an afternoon – especially if there is already a code to specify ‘web-site only’ for, say, expensive text books or print-on-demand titles. Given the size of the database, I’d bet dozens of people have this kind of access. You wouldn’t even have to cross the corporate divide and clear it with the buyers in the book-and-mortar half of the business — and after it’s done, I doubt there is a way to know who reclassed a few hundred SKUs.
…as, of course, it could theoretically happen at ANY retailer, and while there is no way to know exactly how each inventory system works, I have to state unequivocally that I’m only discussing a theory of mine about stores with websites, and not a specific response to anything that might have happened either today or yesterday.
There is also the telephone. If I happen to know a guy in the right job— maybe then with a few phone calls I might even be able to get a few stores to do things in an adhoc, unofficial way. I mention to a field manager that “this is what we’re doing” “take care of it now; the official project is clearing channels as we speak”
Well, quite a bit could be done this way. It would even be possible to make some major merchandising changes in a short time, if you know the right people, without putting a single damning detail in writing. Not that I would be able to comment on that even if I happened to see it happen. But it exists as a possibility in any large organization where personal relationships make it easier to pick up a phone and ask, than it would be to go through official channels, particularly if there were separate divisions in your company with different and occasionally conflicting goals.
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I can’t comment on the DC/B&N spat because I’ve been busy just doing my normal monthly merchandising for the past five days without any emergencies or interruptions of any sort —
and if I lay it on any thicker even the fig leaf of ‘theoretics’ won’t cover it.
