Retail Industry Specialists
Major Learning Outcomes of Earning the CBM Credential for Retail Industry Specialists
Part 1 - Module 100: General Management and Leadership
1. Comprehend strategic management concepts and principles such as locating new stores, new merchandize buying or selling strategies.
2. Master the essential functions of management, such as planning, organizing, controlling, and directing.
3. Plan and organize projects using PERT, Gantt, or CPM techniques.
4. Direct, lead, control, and motivate the project team members.
5. Solve project-related problems and making effective decisions.
6. Learn project management methods and quantitative techniques such as decision-trees and regression analysis.
7. Comprehend ethical responsibilities retail management.
8. Recognize the impact of government on business in terms of laws and regulations that affect retail operations and marketing.
Part 1- Module 200: Operations Management
1. Comprehend the manufacturing operations, such as production planning, inventory control, capacity management, materials management, and logistical management.
2. Perform dollar merchandise planning in order to determine the proper inventory stock levels.
3. Comprehend the open-to-buy concept in the retail buying process.
4. Conduct vendor-buyer negotiations to reach a win-win outcome.
5. Install merchandise control systems to minimize inventory shrinkage, vendor collusion, and theft.
6. Comprehend the elements involved in store planning, layout, and design so important to a store’s success.
7. Learn the supply-chain management and purchasing management practices.
8. Understand service operations in terms of waiting time, capacity management, and customer service concepts.
9. Work with operations management to improve store’s efficiency and effectiveness.
Part 1 - Module 300: Marketing Management
1. Comprehend the essential principles and concepts in a marketing function.
2. Learn pricing and promotional strategies and structures for products and services differentiating between legal and illegal activities.
3. Recognize population trends, economic trends, and social trends, and to determine their impact on retailing.
4. Define market segmentation in order to identify a target market and strategies to reach the target market.
5. Calculate various markups and markdowns.
6. Understand the retail competition, including market structures and demand and supply factors.
7. Participate in the customer satisfaction surveys and programs to improve customer services.
Part 1 - Module 400: Quality and Process Management
1. Comprehend the quality principles, practices, tools, and techniques.
2. Recognize the essential elements of service quality, including retail services.
3. Identify customers, both internal and external, to provide quality services.
4. Benchmark and reengineer the retail department’s functions and processes.
5. Link quality of products and services to revenues, costs, and profits of the organization.
6. Bring quality awareness throughout the organization through total quality management methodologies.
Part 1 - Module 500: Human Resources Management
1. Comprehend the hiring process, including selecting new employees.
2. Conduct employee’s performance evaluations.
3. Develop and implement plans and programs to hire, motivate, and retain selling and non-selling (administrative) employees.
4. Identify people issues in managing diverse workforce, including contractors and consultants.
5. Identify legal issues involved in managing the human resources, such as ADA, EEO, and ADEA.
6. Forecast employee demand and supply for the entire retail organization and to identify gaps.
Part 2 - Module 600: Accounting
1. Comprehend the essential principles and concepts in accounting.
2. Read and interpret the financial statements, such as income statement, retained earnings, cash flow statements, and balance sheet.
3. Develop operating budgets for the retail department at the line-item level, including pro forma financial statements.
4. Apply managerial accounting concepts in decision making, such as incremental revenues and costs and differential revenues and costs.
5. Participate with accounting management in establishing gross margin return on inventory.
6. Partner with accounting management in setting merchandise prices including markups and markdowns.
Part 2 - Module 700: Finance
1. Comprehend the essential principles and concepts in finance.
2. Recognize issues in managing short-term and long-term assets.
3. Advise in the credit collection procedures to minimize legal liability.
4. Participate in financial planning and forecasting, both short-term and long-term.
5. Guide the entire organization in controlling the financial assets of the organization.
6. Develop capital budget requests along with their financial and technical justifications.
7. Understand how businesses are valued, acquired, merged, or divested.
8. Partner with finance management to improve financial performance ratios.
Part 2 - Module 800: Information Technology
1. Identify risks in managing information and technology such as access and privacy breaches.
2. Request value-oriented information systems for operating various business functions such as retail merchandising control system, open-to-buy system.
3. Participate in developing and maintaining information systems projects to meet informational needs of the business.
4. Request and fund the continuity of business services for a specific function, process, or department.
5. Generate standard and/or customized reports for decision-making purposes, such as gross margin returns on inventory, open-to-buy amounts, store employee productivity rates, and store space efficiency and utilization rates.
Part 2 - Module 900: Corporate Control, Law, and Governance
1. Comprehend internal control principles and frameworks for good business.
2. Participate in designing controls to prevent and detect corporate fraud perpetrated by managerial and non-managerial employees.
3. Understand corporate risks in protecting physical and human assets.
4. Learn the essential principles of corporate citizenship, accountability, ethics, and governance.
Part 2 - Module 1000: International Business
1. Learn the global business strategies and practices, including organization structure and control.
2. Comprehend the international trade, investment, payments, and cultures.
3. Understand the international economics, banking, and law.
4. Work with employees at international divisions and business units.
Part 3 - All Ten Modules
1. Integrate the Core and Functional knowledge to see the “big picture” of business.
2. Apply the integrated knowledge in business situations using mini-cases and short-scenarios.
3. Perform technical analyses, to draw conclusions, and to make effective decisions in the following 50 application areas:
Application 1: Strategic Management Analysis
Application 2: Managing and Leading Skills Analysis
Application 3: Sensitivity and Scenario Analysis
Application 4: Economic Analysis
Application 5: Organizational Analysis
Application 6: Decision Analysis
Application 7: Regulatory Analysis
Application 8: Project Management Analysis
Application 9: Portfolio Analysis
Application 10: Business Performance Measurement Analysis
Application 11: Data Analysis
Application 12: Manufacturing Management Analysis
Application 13: Service Management Analysis
Application 14: Retail Management Analysis
Application 15: Supplier Analysis
Application 16: Inventory and Logistics Analysis
Application 17: Levers, Drivers, and Triggers Analysis
Application 18: Value Analysis
Application 19: Outsourcing Analysis
Application 20: Productivity Analysis
Application 21: Contingency and Constraint Analysis
Application 22: Marketing Management Analysis
Application 23: Product and Brand Management Analysis
Application 24: Pricing Analysis
Application 25: Advertising Analysis
Application 26: Sales Analysis
Application 27: Customer Analysis
Application 28: Competitor Analysis
Application 29: Quality Analysis
Application 30: Process Analysis
Application 31: Human Capial Analysis
Application 32: Operating Budget Analysis
Application 33: Cost-Volume-Profit Analysis
Application 34: Cost Analysis
Application 35: Financial Statement Analysis
Application 36: Cash Flow Analysis
Application 37: Tradeoff Analysis
Application 38: Leverage Analysis
Application 39: Capital Budget Analysis
Application 40: Mergers and Acquisitions Analysis
Application 41: Computer Security and Control Analysis
Application 42: Computer Forensic Analysis
Application 43: Electronic Commerce Analysis
Application 44: Business Controls Analysis
Application 45: Fraud Analysis
Application 46: Risk Analysis
Application 47: Stakeholder Analysis
Application 48: Legal and Ethical Analysis
Application 49: International Trade and Financing Analysis
Application 50: Global Management Analysis
