We were engaged by a global grocery retailer and the UK’s biggest supermarket chain, to support the implementation of new direct sourcing systems.

The scope of the project was extremely broad.  It covered the entire sourcing process, from initial product concept to final warehouse, it took in every retail discipline, and it touched on a huge number of third parties.

Approach

We planned the change process in manageable phases, aligning it to the client’s business goals at every step.

As a starting point they wanted to improve the management of their supplier information and the collaboration between their commercial, sourcing and supplier teams.

Following on from that they needed to tackle logistics: to improve their capacity planning and availability of stock, and to simplify the communication chain.

We worked with them to define the business requirements for their systems and processes at every stage of the direct sourcing process.  We took key personnel on a fact-finding trip to see different systems in operation at major retailers, enabling them to make an informed choice before investing in new hardware and software.

We also identified the human resource challenges that the new systems would present in terms of role-change, training and recruitment. We organized appropriate training and led the team through the testing phase.

Outcome

The systems went live in phases and over the span of the project, our team built up the client’s internal capability to deliver change.  At the completion of the work we successfully handed over to a strong internal Change Management team.

This great result demonstrated that by preparing the ground and getting ‘sign-up’ in advance, not just ‘sign-off’ at the end, we are more likely to successfully embed lasting change into a corporate culture.