When building bridges between Finance and Merchandising, Columbus Consulting now has all the answers.
Columbus Consulting International (CCI) announced today that they are helping to close the last gaps between finance and merchandise planning by creating a single center of excellence that will enable retailers to realize their vision of a truly integrated retail planning process.
The Ohio based organization has expanded the firm’s capabilities in the areas of budgeting, planning, reporting, and financial consolidation strategies through the addition of an Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) practice to be spearheaded by Tom Phelps and Dean Tarpley as Partners at CCI.
The expansion of CCI’s practices complements the firm’s existing deep expertise in merchandise planning, allocation, forecasting and supply chain, and the combined capabilities provide clients with a single firm to integrate all planning process across the organization.
“Integrated Retail Planning, where the finance organization and their plans are closely integrated with the merchants and store operations, has been an elusive goal for many Retailers,” said Dean Tarpley, Partner with Columbus Consulting. “The challenge continues to be the silos of people, processes, and technologies within retail companies, and this expansion of CCI will allow us to help our clients link their corporate strategy to their operations in a truly unparalleled way.”
Rick Amari, Columbus Consulting – Founder and Chairman said, “Our customers are asking for assistance in becoming more efficient and integrated in every part of their business: Omni-Channel planning & execution, streamlining their budgeting, planning and buying processes, as well as leveraging technology transformations to support the knowledge-hungry and mobile consumer. This expansion broadens our service expertise in these critical areas, and will help our clients drive greater profitability.”
“Evolving customer preferences, digitally-empowered consumers, and an influx of new competition is transforming the Retail industry, putting increased focus on planning and analytics. Working with 125 leading Retail and Wholesale organizations for the past two decades has given a deep understanding of these challenges and these insights can give our customers with unique value” said Tom Phelps, Partner with Columbus Consulting.
About Columbus Consulting International (CCI)
Columbus Consulting is a unique organization in the world of retail systems and process. Comprised of a team of highly experienced specialists across North America and Europe, the company engages in a very hands-on and detailed mode to ensure that the strategic vision retailers have for their brands across all channels is realized through a combination of business processes, organizational roles & responsibilities, corporate systems, end-user tools, and tactics. The company has delivered solutions for many of the world’s largest and well-known retailers, including American Eagle, ANN, ASOS, At Home, Big Lots, DSW, J.Crew, Lucky Brand, Michael Kors, Mothercare, Mr. Price, Ross Stores, Target, Tory Burch, and Tuesday Morning. The organization has a broad set of skills and resources, as well as specific industry-leading expertise in merchandising, planning & allocation, financial & operational planning, reporting & analysis, and IT strategy/leadership & system implementation. Projects range from steering and delivering large, long-range, multi-disciplinary projects, to managing short-term, high-impact, executive-level interim and advisory services.
About Tom Phelps
Prior to joining Columbus Consulting, Tom Phelps was a Managing Director with Alvarez & Marsal Business Consulting where he led an enterprise performance management practice. In this role he worked with several Retail and CPG organizations in the delivery of EPM initiatives. Tom’s background includes founding two enterprise performance management consulting firms, where he created and led high-performance teams to help clients implement change through improved business planning, reporting and analytics.
About Dean Tarpley
Dean Tarpley comes from Alvarez & Marsal where he was a Managing Director focused on EPM for the Retail industry. Dean has unique experience having spent several years in Corporate FP&A, Store Operations Planning, and Merchandise Planning at multiple retail companies early in his career. Over the past 20 years, he has leveraged the perspective and experience gained by having “sat in the seats of our clients” and assisted over 125 of the top retailers in the U.S. and abroad. He and his team help solve the complexities that come with large-scale EPM initiatives, especially those that require a deep understanding of how to integrate the multiple planning functions within the company.
For more information, please visit www.columbusconsulting.com.
Media Contact:
Stuart Aldridge
E-mail: saldridge@columbusconsulting.com