Malcolm Gladwell is a hot commodity these days. One of his main tenets is that anyone can become a master at something if they dedicate 10,000 hours to that activity. I thoroughly debunked this theory with my golf game, but in other areas this theory has real merit.
Take Grocery inventories. When the same crew is used over and over in a particular chain of Grocery stores, the auditors in that crew get better and better with each inventory they do. They become experts at counting the various departments (Frozen Food, HBC, DSD, Dairy, Soups, etc.), increasing speed and accuracy. Their reliability also increases; they can be depended on to show up on time, at the right location, ready to count.
However, a dedicated team format only works if inventories can be “cycled” out over the course of the year. If all of the inventories have to take place within one or two weeks, this methodology cannot be used. But if the inventories are spread out so that there is only one store per day, over the course of weeks and months, then the same core team can be used for every inventory count.
If your company has numerous locations, this also benefits your employees because the loss prevention, District/Regional management and Accounting departments don’t get bombarded with a ton of work within a short time frame. Cycled inventories throughout the year are definitely the win-win way to go.