Ask any retail supply chain manager what breaks first when a partnership turns sour, and the answer is rarely the numbers — it is the relationship. Retail supply chains run on networks of independent and semi-autonomous businesses working together to source, make and deliver goods, and the strength of the connections between them — with teams, suppliers, stakeholders or individual staff — decides whether the chain holds together under pressure.

This Arab British Fellowship Training Academy course looks at retail through that lens. It works through how modern retail chains are actually run day to day, then moves into the legal and contractual ground rules that keep partnerships stable, and finally into how relationships shift when the organisation itself has to change.

Retail itself has grown from simple barter between traders into structured markets built on defined units, pricing and service — but the underlying task hasn't changed: getting the right goods to the right customer through a chain of people who all have to work together.

Who Should Attend

• Retail management practitioners with hands-on experience who want a deeper understanding of retail supply chain relationships.
• Newly appointed supply chain managers looking to understand how relationships and stakeholders shape the way chains actually operate.
• Managers at any level who carry responsibility for managing or influencing supply chain relationships.

Course Objectives

• Evaluate the different types of relationships that exist within a retail supply chain.
• Recognise the approaches stakeholders need when managing organisational change.
• Assess the key contractual and legal issues that affect retail supply chain relationships.
• Support product presentation by communicating benefits, specifications and features clearly to partners and customers.
• Carry out the practical steps needed to get the right goods to people at the right price.
• Apply collaboration appropriately across a retail supply chain.

• Module 1: The Relationship Map of a Retail Supply Chain

  • Managing relationships inside the organisation.
  • Managing relationships with external partners and suppliers.
  • How different types of retail stores shape the relationships around them.

• Module 2: Working With Stakeholders Through Change

  • Identifying and engaging the stakeholders who matter most.
  • Managing organisational change without breaking key relationships.
  • Communicating change in a way stakeholders can act on.

• Module 3: Contracts and the Legal Ground Rules

  • Managing contracts across the retail supply chain.
  • A general legal overview relevant to retail partnerships.
  • Where legal risk typically enters supply chain relationships.

• Module 4: Competitive Strategy and Retail Positioning

  • Competitive retail strategies and the five dimensions of retail strategy.
  • The EST model for achieving strategic positioning.
  • Evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the best locations.

• Module 5: Leadership, Intelligence and Information in Retail

  • Guiding principles for leadership in retail.
  • Elements of business intelligence in retail operations.
  • Gathering and using information across retail processes.

• Module 6: Performance, People and Culture

  • Key elements of retail management performance.
  • Raising leadership quality and embedding a high-performance culture.
  • Designing and running HR programmes and processes.
  • Evaluating individual performance and building balanced scorecards for stores and retail partners.

• Module 7: Outsourcing and Collaboration Across the Chain

  • When and how to use outsourcing in the retail supply chain.
  • Tools that support effective collaboration.
  • Methods for building genuine collaboration between partners.