What Do JEM Stand For?

At the recent Retail Week Technology Summit several visitors to our stand described us as "agnostic" on the grounds that we were not representing a product. So what we were doing there and what do we provide?

Taking an Exhibitor stand at the Summit was an interesting experience for many reasons but principle amongst them was that we were the only people there not promoting a specific software or hardware solution. In fact, despite having experience of implementing over 20 different systems between us, we have never worked on the same one twice.

This is not because none of these implementations have been good experiences, quite the contrary, but more due to the fact that each situation, each project, has been unique and has required a solution that was made to measure for the circumstances.

Our expertise is in listening to the sponsor and other stakeholders, understanding their requirements and working with them to determine and implement the best solution. We are clear throughout the programme that we represent the organisation we work for rather than any particular supplier.

The fact that we have spent so much of our careers working as Directors and Heads of Department in our respective disciplines has a lot to do with this approach.

"Agnostic" we may be, but only in the sense that we don't take any supplier on faith but believe that the best solution can only be found by understanding and responding to what the client wants.

Written by Mike Gamble: Director JEM Retail Consultants.

Ready, Set, Go! Or not?

To get to the point of go-live your change programme has successfully completed the journey from concept, through design, development and testing, but it is about to be experienced by the most important people of all - your customers. How do you ensure that the organisation is ready?

I would imagine that everyone regularly involved with project work has had their share of difficult go-lives. Fortunately for most of us, few would have been quite as public as the disastrous opening day at Heathrow's Terminal 5 in March 2008 when problems included the staff being delayed when they couldn't get into the car park.

A further combination of computer and mechanical failures finally resulted in the cancellation of 34 flights and a lot of unhappy and frustrated passengers.

One of my own favourites was going live with our carefully tested system only to find that nothing, and I mean nothing, would work for the users. Several frenzied hours later we realised that every member of the testing team had been given system administrator privileges and this is why it all worked when they tried. Functional access corrected we were back on track.

Although not of the same scale, both anecdotes illustrate the need to complete testing in the "real world" and to have a thorough and methodical approach to assessing business readiness. This may include the following two processes:

Organisation Readiness Assessment (ORA): this is a detailed assessment based on predefined criteria by business area that must be met to ensure that the people and processes are ready to start live operations with minimal risk. The person or team conducting the ORA will carry out extensive interviews and will collate and review documentary evidence of all implementation work products such as plans, procedures, training documents and test scripts.

Go / No-Go Checkpoints: these are a series of checkpoint meetings held at key milestones. They must be attended by senior users and suppliers and will use the ORA report as input to assess readiness and approve the decision to continue. Risks, issues and mitigation will also be discussed.

The process of readiness assessment is often at risk due to the high degree of pressure to go live. The change programme is likely to have been going for some time now and the key stakeholders want to see the benefits realisation begin. It isn't always easy but this pressure must be resisted.

Amongst the consequences of not completing this exercise are that your customers may echo the sentiments of Sir George Martin in 2008 "When I came here I was very excited about the new terminal, but not now".

Written by Mike Gamble: Director JEM Retail Consultants

What Freebie?

Which freebies - sorry "promotional merchandise" - do you find the most attractive when you attend exhibitions?

So here we are at the Retail Week Technology Summit and are justifiably proud of our colourful collection of promotional pens, round packs of mints and brochures. Not to mention the opportunity to leave us your business card and enter into a draw to win a very attractive necklace from Stella and Dot (JEM, jewellery, see what we did there?)

Walking around and chatting to the other exhibitors we realise, perhaps unsurprisingly, that we have not exactly been original. We are next to a stand featuring Spotfire from TIBCO Software and they have a handbag sized torch that is proving extremely popular. We congratulate them on cleverly linking a torch with their name (as in "spot" light) only to be told that hadn't occurred to them, they just thought it was a nice item. Are we over thinking this?

Another exhibitor has a very colourful and eye-catching pick n' mix display. Again, exactly nothing to do with their product.

We have already booked our place at the Retail Business Technology Expo next March so if you are reading this please help us out here and let us know in the comments what your favourite freebie item is when you're attending this type of event. There are 9,000 visitors expected so we want to stand out.

If you attend the RBTE please look us up to see if we followed your advice!

Written by Mike Gamble: JEM Retail Consultants

We Have Lift Off!

In commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the final flights of Concorde the new venture I have been working on (and mentioned in a previous blog) goes live after 6-weeks of planning and design work.

Although the original idea was to go-live with our new venture in October to coincide with the final commercial flight of Concorde on the 24th of that month my colleague and I took the decision to advertise in the October edition of Surrey life which, it turns out, is first published on the 24th September. Panic!

The iconic plane, which halved the flight time to New York making it possible to commute for the day, cost passengers £9,000 a ticket, reached 1,350 miles per hour (twice the speed of sound) and flew 60,000 feet over the Atlantic.

On the occasion of its final flight British Airways Chief Rod Eddington said there was a mixture of "sadness and celebration" about its retirement. Actress Joan Collins, who flew on Concorde 10 times and was on board the final flight, expressed the sentiments of the 2.5 million passengers to have flown supersonically on the aircraft, when she described the end of the era as "tragic".

Leaning heavily on the goodwill of our website designer Sara from Creative Remedy we put the finishing touches to our design so that we can test the link with Paypal. We have also had to quickly pull together the advert for Surrey Life and have accepted an invitation to a gala event on the 24th October with the Save Concorde Group.

Fingers crossed that our planning system known by the acronym of SWAG (Scientific Wild-Ass Guessing) won't be too wide of the mark and that the supply chain we have put in place works successfully and can keep up with demand.

Take a look at the outcome of all our hard work on: www.britishairwaysconcorde.com.

Written by Jane Fransen-Hale: JEM Retail Consultants.

A Personal Journey

Anyone that has visited our blog site in the past will have read about Jane's entrepreneurial exploits while she is between contracts. Having completed my last assignment at the end of April 2013 I had a rather more personal goal in mind.

Two years ago I felt that I was a reasonably fit 40-something. I exercised to the point that I regularly took part in 10k runs and had my weight well under control.Through a combination of circumstances, some beyond my control others self-inflicted, this gradually changed so that by May of this year I was officially contributing to the country's obesity statistics.

 At just over 6 feet tall and weighing 239 lbs I had a body mass index (BMI) of 31.5 while the recommended range is 18.5 to 24.9. This made me "very overweight or obese" according to the guidelines published by the National Health Service (NHS). For my height the "healthy weight" range translates into 140 to 189 lbs. This meant I needed to lose a massive 50 lbs or nearly 21% of my body weight!

So how to go about it? A change of diet was obvious, out with the pies and curries for example. A reduction in my consumption of real ale was also called for, which was a lot more difficult to keep to!

I also started to exercise again. At 49 my maximum heart rate is 171 so I bought a heart rate monitor to keep track and made a start. Taking things slowly at first (as if I had a choice) I began by taking lots of walks. Over the course of a couple of weeks this got gradually easier to the point where it was actually quite difficult to keep my average heart rate over 65% of maximum, the ideal "fat burning" level. At this stage I started jogging a little to keep my heart rate up and over time I have slowly (although not slowly enough to avoid taking a week out with a bad back) increased the intensity to the point where I keep it in the range of 130 - 160 beats per minute.

Over the summer I have lost 25 lbs to reduce my BMI to 28.2. This still puts me in the overweight range so I have a long way to go, but I feel I have made a good start and am determined to keep going. Even though it is painful!

Written by Mike Gamble: JEM Retail Consultants

Go West, Young Man!

Originally advice given by American author Horace Greely in the 19th century, this could well be applied to 21st century sourcing strategy as Chinese manufacturing wages rise and its 30-year position as a low cost supplier look to be coming to an end.

Although China remains an important supplier for many UK retailers Ben Cooper reported that half of 28 retail executives interviewed are now sourcing from alternative markets and even more significantly only two expect to be sourcing more from China in the near future.

So what are the main reasons for this and which countries are emerging to take China's place?

Huge increases in labour costs of up to 15% year on year. In fact it is anticipated by Boston Consulting that China's manufacturing cost advantage over the US will disappear by 2015.

The working age population is declining. The Financial Times reports that by the end of 2012 the population aged between 15 and 59 was 937.27m. A decrease of 3.45m from 2011 according to figures released by China's National Bureau of Statistics.

For the first time in 2013 the Chinese renminbi (yuan) became one of the top-10 most traded currencies and has reached record levels of value relative to other currencies making importing from China more expensive. In addition to this Chinese manufacturers are more often imposing high minimum order quantities.

Some retailers have experienced a degree of unreliability from Chinese suppliers due to the increasing mobility of the workforce and the seeming lottery of the "will they or won't they come back after Chinese New Year".

Zara is well known for having one of the very best supply chain models in the fashion world and where do they manufacture? Two thirds of their production is from Africa and Europe.

A new study from Stratfor Global Intelligence has identified a "Post-China 16" that includes four African countries as well as Mexico, Peru and Indonesia. Europe offers shorter lead times and lower minimum order quantities, which combined with reduced freight costs is good news for net profitability.

What next? A return of UK manufacturing? Fingers crossed, young man!

Written by Erica Vilkauls: JEM Retail Consultants

Flying High Between Contracts

While being a consultant gives me the opportunity to work with a variety of interesting people on exciting change programmes, gaps between contracts are an occupational hazard. Oscar Wilde said "a break from employment is not a holiday" and on this occasion I decided to do something more constructive with my break than play tennis and chase the next assignment.

Looking back on it now I was foolish not to have flown off to some exotic destination the moment my last contract ended, isn't hindsight a wonderful thing? Instead I have filled my time with various, mainly none paying, projects that have gradually grown to the point that I find myself "working" at something or other 7 days a week. So now my situation will move from working all the time whilst unemployed, to working in full time employment without ever having the holiday on an exotic beach in between!

So what am I busy with I hear you ask? Well I will tell you about one of those projects and if this blog gets enough hits to keep Mike happy and off my back for a couple of days, then I will write about another one.

Concorde was one of the most beautiful and iconic aircraft ever built. It was also one of the most exclusive with just 20 being made between 1966 and 1979 and only 14 of them ever entering commercial service with BA and Air France.

October 24th this year marks the 10th anniversary of the last commercial flight by Concorde when 3 flights landed at Heathrow within 5 minutes of each other to "cheers and tears" according to Joan Collins who was on the last of them arriving at 16:05. The last flight ever was on November 26th 2003 when Concorde was flown from Heathrow to its birth place at Filton Airfield near Bristol carrying 100 BA staff.

After more than 250,000 hours of flight time Concorde had come home.

But I am starting to sound like Wikipedia. The point of this is that a friend of mine has a source of Concorde memorabilia including some stunning fine art prints signed by Concorde pilots and stylishly framed with the unusual addition of an authenticated seat belt. As you can imagine these products have extremely limited availability making them very collectable and my friend wanted to market them to coincide with the forthcoming anniversaries. Unfortunately he didn't have the time, which is where I came in.

Going with a website was the obvious thing to do and Sara at Creative Remedy, who built the website for JEM Retail Consultants, was on hand to help. What was less straightforward was settling on a price point that will provide the required margin and return on investment but not put off the customer. As these are unique items there was really nothing to go on.

Then there was trying to estimate the demand. The exclusivity is a great selling point for the prospective buyer but could be a stock availability nightmare for us. There is no planning system here full of 2-years sales history. There is no tried and tested customer profile. The largest task of all is the search for the potential customer base and finding ways of drawing them onto the website.

I think even my trusted colleague Erica would forgive me for resorting to a spreadsheet if, in fact, that would even help. What will the take up be? Will 2 of us have the capacity to fulfil the orders? Will our supply chain be fast and robust enough to meet sales? Do we need to source more products? Other products? We discuss and debate all of these questions; we then stick our fingers in the air and grab numbers out of the sky. Hopefully that doesn't sound like your planning system. Or does it?

Kidding apart I am excited about the venture. The website will go live on Tuesday 24th September when I will send out a quick update to let you know the details and keep you informed of its progress, hopefully success and the performance of our planning and merchandising system!

Written by Jane Fransen-Hale: JEM Retail Consultants.

First Do No Harm!

Maintaining customer service during the implementation of major change is vital to the lifeblood of your business so what steps should Project Managers take to safeguard business continuity?

Although there are many things to take into consideration when determining how to minimise risk - assessing the feasibility of parallel running for example - in my experience this usually comes down to the successful completion of 4 main activities:

The first is a comprehensive testing strategy that explains how the acceptance criteria established at the Initiation Stage will be met. Generically this is likely to break down into multiple phases, such as functional; user acceptance testing; integration and so on, with each phase breaking down into separate cycles.

There are no hard and fast rules for this, it depends on the nature of your implementation, but experience would suggest a few "Do's" and "Don'ts": Do have a formal approach to fault reporting / resolution as well as version control. Do not complete user acceptance testing using just your IT Team and / or super-users. They know how to make it work! Do complete every phase of the testing, including volume testing, irrespective of time pressure. Do not believe that it will be alright on the night. If it won't work in testing the chances of it working after go-live are remote.

Secondly there is the vital issue of end-user training. Surprisingly I have often found it difficult to gain full support for this within projects. I suspect this is partly from some degree of denial, but is mostly because getting people running the current business as usual operation released can be problematic. Failing to resource and deliver training adequately will, at best, delay benefits realisation and at worst can put the whole project delivery at risk.

The best approach to training will depend on the target audience but I've found that there is a lot to be said for "Tell me; Show me; Try me; Test me". This is on the grounds that when you tell people they will, hopefully, listen. If you show them they may understand. Let them practice and they'll remember and passing an assessment builds confidence. There is a lot to be said for repetition. I owe a lot to my friends at Training for Advancement (TFA) for helping me to develop and apply this approach in 4 separate projects to date.

Thirdly is the development of a robust cut over plan including multiple go / no-go points including detailed contingency planning. This plan may well cover a time period that starts well before the actual cut over event and needs to describe every task required to complete the cut over successfully. It defines the critical path for the implementation event and must be done comprehensively.

Lastly is the issue of support. It is almost inevitable that end users will initially lack confidence in the use of a new system and processes. At best they have been reduced to a state of conscious competence and are therefore having to think much more carefully about what they are doing and how they are doing it. Providing adequate support from the project team will establish the new operation as business as usual in the shortest possible timescale.

Some resistance to change is unavoidable and the attitude of any team towards the new ways of working will be greatly influenced by the number of problems they experience and how assured they feel in their own understanding. This can greatly affect the speed and degree with which the original project objectives are met, but at least as importantly it will determine the confidence and morale of your team.

Written by Mike Gamble: JEM Retail Consultants

Why Successful Projects Need a Good Start in Life

I've often been asked what the biggest risk is to the successful delivery of any project. Having experienced my share of triumphs and disasters I've reached the conclusion that the seeds of both are sown at the beginning.

This is for several reasons: firstly I don't think people always properly consider if what they are doing is a change programme, a portfolio of projects or a single project. This might seem like semantics but actually it can be overwhelmingly significant and the answer makes a huge difference to how the team is organised and managed.

Secondly, at the start of any new initiative the end always seems a long way away. It isn't, but let's be honest, we're all busy people and if it is a choice between dealing with the latest 5 minute crisis or spending time worrying about the detail of what is going to happen in 8 months or 12 months time, guess what most people are going to do?

In my view this is a mistake. The devil is in the detail and programme / project initiation must be adequately resourced both in terms of time and expertise to ensure that the scope, approach, timescale, plan, benefits, quality expectations and risks are fully understood and baselined.

Ironically the third reason is that at the start of any project there tends to be a rush to action. To tick tasks off the list. Spending time stressing about a Project Initiation Document may seem like an administrative issue demanded by some pedantic, methodology mad consultant.

If it isn't done properly however the risk is that you either won't reach go-live or, if you do, that one or more key stakeholders will begin a conversation with the words "Oh! I didn't realise...."

Written by Mike Gamble: JEM Retail Consultants

Difficult Decisions when Building a Team to Support Change Management

If your existing management team are fully occupied running the business then how can you second them into programme or project management positions?

I recently had a very interesting conversation with a senior Head of Business Transformation for a well known retailer. They are about to embark on a major change programme and his issue is that the existing management team are fully occupied with business as usual and consequently there is no possibility of them having the bandwidth to participate in the projects that will be required, even assuming that they have the requisite skills and experience.

His question: does he second people from the BAU team and back-fill them in the short term; or should he deliver the change programme using contractors or interim managers?

This is an incredibly difficult question to answer. It is also one that many organisations in the same circumstances will face and getting it right will be critical not only to the success of the change programme but also to benefits realisation and, I would suggest, retention of key employees.

There is no doubt that involving people from BAU will increase their commitment to the success of the change programme. It is also a unique opportunity to learn about new systems and processes before they become business critical. So involving the existing team is a priority.

On the other hand, they are the only people who understand how the current processes work and are therefore essential to business continuity. Bringing people in to temporarily replace them will involve a time consuming and ultimately throw away level of resource training people to use systems that now have a finite lifespan.

There is also the issue that BAU people are not used to project type work and gaining and being confident of those skills may add to the project critical path.

The answer may be to combine the two approaches. This would involve bringing external people into key programme and project roles to benefit from their expertise, but it would also necessitate being prepared to restructure some of the BAU roles and bringing in additional resource to allow BAU managers to be released to the programme, potentially on a part-time basis to act as subject matter experts for example.

There is no one right answer to this dilemma, but it is a fact that there is a natural resistance to change in most organisations. Involving your BAU team is a key way to break this down and ensure their motivation.

Written by Mike Gamble: JEM Retail Consultants

Making an Exhibition of Ourselves!

First venture into taking an exhibition stand for our newly formed consultancy.

Between us my colleagues and I at JEM Retail Consultants have over 100 years of experience gained with 20 retail organisations but as individuals have normally gained new contracts via fairly conventional routes – usually our personal networks or through agencies.

Although we have now worked together on 4 separate occasions this is our first experience of trying to find a contract as a Consultancy and we felt that we needed to market our services at an exhibition in order to make some new contacts and promote the services we can offer.

So where to go?
The first opportunity we chose was the Retail Week Technology Summit being held in London on the 25th / 26th September 2013. This was partly influenced by helping to win the Supply Chain Excellence Award hosted by Retail Week but we chose it mostly because it will be attended by part of our target audience: CIO’s and IT Directors from top retailers.

Retail Week Technology Summit: www.retailtechsummit.com

Next was the Retail Business Technology Expo being held at Earl’s Court on the 11th / 12th March 2014. This is expected to attract over 9,000 visitors taking advantage of the 300 exhibition stands and the networking opportunities that will be provided.

Great! Decision made but what else do we need? The most obvious thing was a display stand and fortunately Sara from Creative Remedy who developed our website for us was on hand to do the design drawing from the branding she created for the web. Next were pens, packets of mints and printed brochures.

I think it is fair to say that this has taken rather more organising than I had anticipated when we started but we are looking forward to the experience and the opportunity to make new contacts.

We would certainly be interested to hear from anyone who has experience of exhibiting at this type of event, particularly if there are any other venues they would suggest.


Written by Mike Gamble: www.jemconsultants.co.uk

In Search of a Third Way

In these times of austerity is there an alternative to completing your change programme using either internal resources or blue chip consultants?

 

As an expanding retailer you have a 3-5 year strategy for growth. You recognise that the company’s infrastructure, processes and even organisational structure will not support further expansion. To deliver the company’s strategy you need an approach that will both reduce risk and maintain business continuity throughout.  So where do you go for help?

Blue chip consultancies have many advantages, amongst them being a high level of expertise and unlimited resource to support the difficult decisions to be taken. The consultants you work with are very credible and have the ability to engage with your team.

This reassurance may come at a high price if your identity gets lost in the corporate machine with the risk that the people you rely on feel disenfranchised by the experience reducing skills transfer and motivation.

Using internal resource is an attractive financial proposition however are they not already fully employed? Over stretching the team could jeopardise business continuity and may increase the programme length and delay benefits realisation. There is also a risk that they may lack some of the required project and programme management skills.

So can a smaller, made to measure consultancy firm provide the best of all worlds? They can supply the expertise, knowledge and skills you would expect of consultants but will integrate with your team and culture. Having an established relationship with each other means that they can get to work quickly on the key tasks and using their experience to flexibly combine consultancy with interim line management keeps costs down and adds maximum value while delivering the agreed strategy and transferring skills to your team.

Any one, or in fact any combination, of the above approaches may be right for you but working with a made to measure consultancy may be the most successful way of combining the best of each, or at least avoiding the worst of the pitfalls.

Written by Mike Gamble: www.jemconsultants.co.uk