Project Description
Strategic retail change management roadmap and targeted communications to ensure business process improvements deliver and sustain meaningful capabilities across wholesale and franchise operations
The Client
A 130-year-old leading, global, specialty retailer of apparel and accessories for men, women, and children operating four brands through 730 stores across North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, as well as two e-commerce sites.
The Challenge
This retailer was experiencing significant growth within their wholesale and franchise divisions. The core retail business possessed a deep commitment to “retail first,” and the client recognized the need to optimize their business processes to ensure activities were focused on this agenda.
The Parker Avery Group was engaged to assess the wholesale and franchise operations and recommend business process improvements that would deliver capabilities to support the client’s objectives. Further, Parker Avery was tasked to deliver a change management roadmap that would underpin the entire effort. Imperative to the change management roadmap and overall success of the initiative was inclusion of a robust communication plan to help the organization understand and embrace the process improvement opportunities.
The Parker Avery Solution
Parker Avery conducted over 30 interviews and facilitated several cross-functional workshops to build a strategic retail organizational change management roadmap that integrated a highly targeted communication plan focused on maximizing the company’s growth opportunities.
Key Parker Avery activities included:
- Defining specific criteria to prioritize key functions for engagement
- Conducting a comprehensive audience segmentation analysis to ensure focused and impactful communications
- Crafting tailored messages and benefit statements based on the different roles and levels being addressed
- Developing a six-month roadmap, embedding key communication milestones
- Creating an engaging and interactive launch campaign to pique interest and create excitement throughout the organization
The initiative was supported by a program governance team, comprised of varying functions and levels, and underpinned with strong sponsorship from senior executives.
Through the course of eleven weeks, Parker Avery facilitated several work sessions with the client team to collaborate on building and refining the change management roadmap and communication plan. Further, Parker Avery created the campaign kick-off deck and provided executives with a change leadership toolkit to guide them through the upcoming transition.
The Result
The effort allowed the client and Parker Avery to collaboratively build the initial change management roadmap by leveraging the client team’s expertise and insights. Ultimately, Parker Avery guided the company in identifying, crafting, and executing their own change activities. This knowledge transfer ensured a sense of ownership and commitment to new ways of working, as well as minimized organizational resistance.