Project Description
Designing a new field organization with infusion of industry leading practices to enhance the company’s ability to provide support for store operations and associates.
The Client
A value retailer operating over 5,100 stores across the U.S. and Canada, with multiple banners and aggressive growth plans.
The Challenge
The client recognized that its field support organization had not kept pace with store growth – in many cases store count had doubled, while field support headcount remained the same. Additionally, each region – and even districts within regions – had unique characteristics, e.g., urban vs. rural locations, high volume vs. low volume sales, and stable vs. high growth markets.
Previous attempts to address the field organization had been only minimally successful, and because they were required to perform a variety of support activities, district management had become less effective in managing store-level operations.
The Parker Avery Solution
The Parker Avery Group worked closely with the client to fully comprehend the business requirements and design a field organization that would enhance the ability of field management to successfully run their stores, provide stronger focus on developing associates and support corporate growth plans.
The work effort included the following key activities:
- Reviewed the current field management structure and identified opportunities for improvement
- Designed the future field management organizational model including definition of roles, responsibilities and reporting relationships as well as recommended headcount
- Defined a high level roadmap for transitioning to the future state operating model
Key project deliverables included:
- Current and future state role-based RACIs
- Best practice gap assessment
- Design guiding principles, requirements and priorities
- Future organizational model with metrics
- Hierarchy design and job descriptions
- Future headcount requirements and financial impact analysis
The Result
The client has begun migrating to the new organizational model at the home office and by implementing the new design in a field-based pilot geography.
Parker Avery was also engaged to lead the development of training materials for the pilot; these materials will subsequently be leveraged to introduce the new design to the rest of the field.