THE WAREHOUSE
GROUP
The Warehouse Group is one of New Zealand's largest retailers, comprising of The Warehouse, Warehouse Stationery, Noel Leeming, Torpedo7, 1-day and TheMarket. With over 260+ retail stores, online stores as well as distribution centres, TWG has more than 12,000 employees throughout New Zealand.
In 2019, faced with ever-increasing local and overseas competition, The Warehouse Group Board and Executive Team made the bold decision to move to a fully Agile operating model. Working with McKinsey as consulting Partner, Mark Redgrave joined the leadership team in the role of Agile Lead to guide the company through what is currently the largest end-to-end Agile transformation of a retailer anywhere in the world.
A New Era For Retail
Being the first retailer in the world to implement an end-to-end Agile operating model, the company was crystal clear on their 'why'. The Warehouse Group needed to:
1. Get closer to the customer in all that they do
2. Be more efficient and faster to market
3. Get back the innovation that made them famous
In his role as Agile Lead, Mark Redgrave, was part of the design team that developed the new operating model for TWG. He created the Agile Centre of Excellence (Agile COE) at TWG and was responsible for implementing and evolving the operating model and ways of working alongside the Finance and HR teams. He recruited and developed a team of 27 Agile coaches who worked with the Tribes and Support Functions to optimise the flow of work and value delivery to the end customer. Key outcomes achieved by the Agile COE included:
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Complete operating model design, moving 1000 roles into 15 Tribes and 14 Chapter Areas - and successfully transitioning of $3.6bn of run-rate revenue into a new way of working
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Designed and delivered 2-day launch event “Agile Bootcamp” for 1000+ participants via Zoom – the largest virtual Agile event of its type ever created
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Implementation of three ‘Frontrunner’ Tribes, successfully moving Apparel, Click&Collect and Enterprise Data groups as first-movers into the Agile model
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Operating model transformation that achieved an immediate 15% increase in work efficiency with no negative impact on trading performance
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Established TWG Agile Centre of Excellence, developing 27 Agile Coaches to achieve IC Agile accreditation
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Designed and delivered training programmes for all key roles: Product Owners (90), Chapter Leads (95), Chapter Area Leads (14) and Tribe Leads (15)
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Achieved Y1 ‘Agile 360 Maturity Assessment’ score of 6.3 – +7% above global benchmarks (McKinsey Clients)
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Developed 3-yr Enterprise Agility Roadmap for TWG to accelerate innovation and value delivery
Record Results
TWG's transformation to an Agile operating model and new ways of working has been an intense and impressive one. Over the past two years, the company has proved its ability to adapt and respond through COVID, and to deliver big-ticket items like click&collect that had been in the works for years prior. With Fy22 coming to close now, The Warehouse Group is on track to achieve two consecutive years of record results:
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FY21 NPAT increase of 164%
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FY21 Sales +7.6%
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FY21 Customer NPS +7.5pts
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FY21 Head office eNPS +17pts (to +44)
The World's Largest Virtual Bootcamp
With NZ's first COVID lock-down hitting just before the company was due to 'flip' to the new way of working, the Agile COE had no option but to completely pivot their kick-off bootcamp to become a virtual event. Having spent 3 months preparing to host 900 people face-to-face at the epic Spark Arena, Mark and the Agile coaching team had just 3 weeks to completely redesign and deliver 2-days of engaging content digitally over Zoom and Miro for over 1000 employees. And the rest, as they say, is history. Proof of what can be achieved by working smart. Check it out...