Global Fast-Fashion Retailer

Intro

This was a multi brand global fast fashion retailer whose name I have kept anonymous for reasons which will become clear and with a turnover of over $US10 billion operating over 2300 outlets. Not everything went perfect on this project and I have included it as a lesson to anyone considering getting involved in a large transformation

Brief

A technically excellent finance team lacked ability to see beyond the numbers and give good commercial insight to the management team. This had led to various supply chain issues, overstocking with stock days being over 6 months in some areas. Our objective was to help develop more commercial acumen within the senior finance team and ensure that the business was prepared for a world which was to be increasingly dominated by clicks rather than bricks.

Outcome

We combined extensive research with a leading management consulting team in the retail sector and feedback from an extensive in-house survey of broader business stakeholders within the group to develop a program for over 120 of the senior finance team.

Although there was lots of positive buy-in from the senior managers, the executive team were culturally still much more focused on technical excellence over the behavioural changes needed for commercial acumen to really improve. This was despite having a full time client liaison manager working with the client and agreeing and signing up to everything we delivered. I feel the key lesson from this one is that before deciding to undertake such a transformation executive level buy-in must be 100%