Developing A Customer Focused Organisation

What was the challenge?

European retail customers were becoming more demanding of the service standards and products that they were being offered on the high street.  In response to this we were asked by one of the more progressive retailers to support them in transforming their organisation to become truly customer led.  The objective was to maximise market share, profits and cash flow by delivering a customer focus through all aspects of the value chain.

What was the approach?

Through a series of workshops with the business leaders we established a clear vision for what ‘customer focus’ meant for each aspect of the business.  This enabled us to produce a gap assessment between the current mindset and the desired state.  In parallel to this we also reviewed how the organisation could make best use of its European scale and expert knowledge to drive better innovation, enhance value and standardise working practices.

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The changes that were proposed represented a fundamental shift in the structure and behaviours of the organisation and it was therefore essential to secure full engagement from all sectors of the business.  In order to achieve this, we formed joint delivery workstreams which helped to build the plans for the specific changes that would be needed.  These included enhancements to the management information systems, better customer segmentation, organisational changes, improvements to the supply chain, more cross functional involvement in the proposition design and better consideration of post sales aftercare.  The individual workstream plans were then brought together through the programme office and a multi-phased delivery timetable was established.

How did we help?

Through this programme we helped the organisation develop the capability to anticipate customer needs and provide propositions that were matched to the local markets whilst leveraging its international capabilities.  We provided a highly scalable business model that was capable of supporting international expansion and provided the tools and methods to enable colleagues to carry out their roles in the simplest and most effective way.  Standard commercial operating processes that placed the customer at the heart of each decision were adopted across all territories.  These changes enabled the business to deliver an additional £50m gross profit and a £50m improvement in cash by the second year.