Roles, Responsibilities and Process Improvement Case Study

CLIENT: A $1B+ national Big Box retailer

The challenge

This specialty retailer retained PwC Canada’s Retail Consulting Services to review their current Merchandising practices, as the executive team believed that there was significant opportunity to improve the Merchandising organization’s effectiveness through defining clear strategies, focus, and accountabilities.

Our approach

PwC Canada’s Retail Consulting Services defined, harmonized and planned the roll-out of critical merchandising processes to improve the Merchandizing Organization’s effectiveness. We also identified the accountable associates for each process, defined key performance indicators for measuring success for each process and role and designed consistent and actionable reporting.

PwC Canada’s Retail Consulting Services identified a significant issue in the planning process, as assortment decisions were conducted at a tactical-level, with minimal strategy in place. PwC Canada’s Retail Consulting Services drove the category strategy planning process, including training to ensure that all category managers were planning their assortments in a strategic manner going forward.

PwC Canada’s Retail Consulting Services also recognized a substantial gap in technological solutions available to automate much of the manual work conducted by the Merchandising team. We identified functional requirements as well as internal and external costs to develop or enhance current technology solutions to support merchandising roles and promotional effectiveness.

The result

• Millions of dollars of savings through improvements & streamlining of roles & responsibilities
• Significant savings realized through the development of a more focused category strategy and improved clarity of individual functions and activities