Summary
Our retailer client chose us because of our significant contribution in solving issues that have become contentious, complex and critical. These issues were due to disruptions/delays in operations, timely monitoring, validations and reporting of incidents and an inability to have a single version of truth due to misaligned supply chain and tracking. The following Case Study is sensitive and in some cases contentious in nature and therefore our client has requested that they remain anonymous.
Business issue
This household named retailer was looking to improve overall efficiency and effectiveness and also required support in management of delays and errors in Operational Risk, Compliance and Safety within a very short span of time with the aim of rapidly improving profitability and better compliance and enhanced safety measures.
The retailer wanted to understand how Ark's innovative technology complemented by improved process systems could benefit in-store activities, Central Management and Execution Processes ensuring significant cost savings and an effective response system to manage their Operational Risk, Compliance, Security and Safety capability.
Our approach
We carried out an as is scoping study where we identified that over £700,000 was being spent on data capturing general Health and Safety and Incident issues per year. However, there was up to 6 months delay in reporting issues and thus exposing the retailer to wider risks, insurance claims and poor reputation. It was also identified that there was hardly any direct relationship and a massive disconnect between various necessary functions such as compliance management, training, accidents and incidents reporting & knowledge management.
The study also depicted that various reports were erroneous and not produced in time. It was also identified that to process various data by payroll was estimated to cost ~ £396,000, and a further £270,000 was spent on auditing the stalls to understand the baseline results and operating levels in Operational Risk Compliance and Safety. Along with these thefts at store levels were growing significantly to cost over £100,000 per month.
Using our Professional Services capability together with deep and pragmatic understanding of the Retail Sector we were able to analyse and map out the suggested processes and practices that could be replaced by simplifying actions, removing unnecessary manual operations with more efficient, productive and automated workflows, integrating various systems that could come together to provide better value and greater situational awareness in real time.
At a very basic level our analysis indicated that if the retailer decentralised the process of execution and still managed the various reporting, delegation, knowledge management with unified roll-out of technology and process across all the facilities there would be tangible cost savings across the supply and value chain.
Overall benefit
- Overall benefit estimated to be over £6 million over a three-year period combined at a very basic level with analytics for better and informed decisions and investment planning
- A change in culture on security matters and a reduction in incidents
- Integration of an e-learning package on security for Risk Managers and other employees managing and executing Operational Risk, Compliance, Safety and Security processes on a daily basis while embedding appropriate user stories through online surveys providing few live case examples