Retail and distributors work in a market with tight margins, where customer experience is crucial and agility essential. To compete, it is necessary to have the right energy strategy and an energy partner with the expertise and innovative solutions to solve key challenges – helping to maximize operational efficiency, improve resilience and deliver a sustainable future.
Powering the retail and distribution market
Retailers and distributors need to improve margins, protect customer experiences, boost reputation and increase competitiveness.
A 20% cut in energy costs can mean the same bottom line benefit to a retailer as a 5% increase in sales*
The pressures squeezing retailers and distributors
The demands retailers and distributors face have never been greater. Intense competition and rising input costs squeeze margins right across the retail sector. Staying in profit is a major challenge – you need to drive down costs. But at the same time, you need to deliver a positive customer experience. What’s more, your operation is increasingly dependent on technology – downtime means disastrous impact on customer satisfaction and loyalty, so resilience is essential. Customers also expect retailers to demonstrate a genuine commitment to sustainability.
What role does energy have to play?
We are the US’s leading energy supplier. Nobody understands the current energy challenges facing the retail and distribution sector as we do. We know the facts:
- With energy costs a big proportion of overhead and forecasted to rise, retailers and distributors must improve energy efficiency and reduce costs to improve narrow margins
- Downtime from system outages means lost sales, money and poor customer satisfaction. For the grocery cold chain, failure of refrigeration equipment can mean disaster – you need a proactive maintenance system to ensure the continuous productivity of equipment
- Consumer demand for sustainable and ethical practices means you must have strong ‘green credentials’
- Inefficient technologies across geographically-dispersed stores leads to energy waste, impacting your organization’s resilience and carbon footprint – a reliable and flexible supply is necessary to ensure you can deliver an optimal environment at all times
- Retailers and distributors must be able demonstrate adherence to increasingly tight environmental and food safety regulations – or risk severe penalties for non-compliance
Now is the time to capitalize on new opportunities to improve energy efficiency and reduce costs to improve narrow margins. We can help ensure your energy strategy enables you to respond quickly to changing market conditions and seize new opportunities.
In research by Centrica Business Solutions, we found:
60%
of respondents in the retail and wholesale sectors believe they do not have enough control over energy usage
83%
of retail and wholesale contacts surveyed had concerns about the risk of interruption to energy supply due to external factors
90%
of retail and wholesale respondents agreed that there were opportunities for an effective energy strategy to help them operate a sustainable business model
Our retail and distribution market customers
Read how retail and distribution businesses are driving results with distributed energy solutions.
$4785
estimated average cost of retail downtime incidents per minute**
78%
of retailer and wholesaler respondents agreed that the cost of being energy resilient is far less than the impact of an energy failure***
1,900
tons of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere pa by a typical supermarket****
Read more related information
These are articles we think you will find interesting for your retail and distribution business.
SOURCES:
*The Carbon Trust, April 2018)
**Energy Advantage Research, Centrica Business Solutions. Statistics based on a six country survey of more than 1,000 energy decision-makers in large organizations.
***retailtechnology.co.uk - avoiding-the-cost-of-downtime
****www.energystar.gov