How to know if your Retail OpEx strategy is failing and what to do
Operational Excellence (OpEx) is an initiative to drive the very best performance in a business. It helps make a company more competitive and better able to respond to market opportunities.
A retail OpEx strategy uses various tools, technologies and methods to drive huge transformation and results. This sounds perfect, yet studies have found that two-thirds of large organisations fail to implement their strategies. So why is this and how do you know if your strategy is failing to deliver the results that you need to succeed?
Why do Retail Operational Excellence strategies fail?
Implementing an OpEx strategy is not easy and there are several reasons as to why they might fail. These include the following:
1. Because the strategy isn’t people focused
You could have devised the best retail OpEx strategy in the world but if you can’t get your people to execute it then what chance have you got? Your strategy needs to encompass exactly how you are going to drive behaviour in your staff along with how you are going to track and measure efforts to ensure that everyone is on track.
1.1 How can you make your strategy people focused?
To put people at the centre of your strategy it’s important to answer these questions:
Who is responsible for taking ownership of different areas in the strategy?
How will I inform and educate employees about their role in the strategy?
How will I track and measure my team’s performance to ensure they are aligning with the goals of the strategy?
Are there any barriers in the way of my staff being able to complete what they need to fulfil the strategy?
How will I collect ongoing feedback during the strategy to keep on top of any issues or problems that arise?
How will I get staff to stick to new behavioural changes which happen during the implementation of the strategy?
How will I keep employees motivated about the strategy to ensure it is continuously followed?
2. You didn’t allow the strategy to be flexible enough to deal with external issues which may arise
Retail OpEx strategies need to be thought about in the real world. It is not realistic to have a plan that is so rigid it falls apart at the first sign of an obstacle. Your strategy must be able to adapt and change to fit the needs of external factors. To make your retail OpEx strategy more flexible you should:
Review your strategy at regular intervals - this will allow you to tweak and refine it as you go. If you don’t, it can mean that elements of your strategy get neglected because things aren’t working the way that you planned. If people have no way of reporting an issue to change it they will just stop doing it all together.
Involve more of the right people - if you only have a small number of people who have the power to change parts of the strategy, it makes it difficult to be proactive. Involve all the right people in your plan who have the skills and knowledge to make the changes that need to happen.
Have a few different backup plans - always expect the unexpected when trying to roll out a new strategy. Have several different backup plans that you can fall onto if anything goes wrong along the way.
3. Your purpose for doing the retail OpEx strategy in the first place isn’t strong enough
It’s the same with most things in life, if you are doing something for the sake of doing it, then you won’t achieve the results that you want. If you have a specific reason as to why you need to carry out your retail OpEx strategy you will achieve greater success. This needs to be clear and inspiring so that you can share it with everyone in the business. For example to increase sales in the business by eliminating waste, driving efficiency and upskilling the relevant people.
4. You don’t have retail OpEx leaders in each department or store
For your strategy to work you need leaders at multiple levels who are clear on what needs to be done and by who. These leaders need to be masters in employee engagement to ensure that your staff stay on track. You need to make sure that your leaders understand their role as part of the wider strategy. Leaders don’t necessarily have to be managers they can be anyone who shows a keen interest and understanding of the strategy.
5. There is a lack of clarity for the actions that are required
There is a lack of clarity for the actions that are required on various sections of your strategy. You don’t specify what is needed or clearly define how people can achieve the results. Because people don’t want to get it wrong or do something that they shouldn’t they ended up not doing it. Good communication is key so that employees can ask you when something isn’t obvious to them. Think instant messaging rather than email as email can add further delays to the process.
What to look out for to know if your own retail OpEx strategy is failing
It is easy to see why an operational excellence strategy would fail before you have implemented it. But it is harder to spot the signs of a failing plan whilst you are in the midst of it. The earlier you spot a strategy that is heading nowhere the better you will be able to deal with it and make the necessary changes. Below we have listed the signs to look out for which can be an indicator that your retail OpEx strategy is failing.
1. Hardly anyone is talking about the strategy anymore
When you speak to different people in the business the principles of your OpEx strategy rarely come into the conversation. This is a sign that it has been forgotten about or pushed to the bottom of the pile. Employees are too busy managing their day-to-day responsibilities and trying to integrate your strategy becomes a burden for them.
2. You are seeing no results
If you and everyone in the business is following your strategy but results aren’t changing, it’s a sign that things are not working. You need to first specify if results aren’t happening just because you are only looking for the big milestone achievements.
If this is the case it’s important to think about the smaller results which have to be achieved for you to see the bigger successes. For example, if a large goal is to speed up delivery times for customers, a smaller milestone could be speeding up loading times or the time it takes to do a delivery audit.
If you just aren’t seeing results from your smaller milestones, then you need to go back to the drawing board and tweak your strategy. Check in with managers and retail OpEx leaders - ask for updates and collect feedback. Try to highlight gaps which could be preventing you from achieving success.
3. You are way ahead of your schedule for the strategy
Great, you think. Employees are engaged and work is being done. But this isn’t always good. If you are hitting goals in record time and it’s plain sailing then it’s probably too good to be true. This is a sign that your strategy wasn’t challenging enough, when this happens it means that you aren’t going to see any significant results because not much has changed.
A good way to keep track of tasks and time is to use digital checklists. You can set deadlines for them to be completed and they will track the amount of time taken to do a task. You can then look through the checks and see what is and isn’t being done, you can highlight tasks that are being done in record time and investigate further to see what is happening.
4. You are still noticing old habits
A good retail OpEx strategy will require people to change lifelong habits. After all it’s these old habits that have put a halt to achieving maximum efficiency and productivity. Your strategy should be encouraging new and improved ways of doing things, if you are continually seeing traditional methods it is clear that your strategy is being overlooked. A common reason for this is because staff aren’t trained enough on the benefits of the new operating procedures. Education is key in getting staff to believe the value in your new methods.
Alternatively it could be that your new methods don’t actually work, you will need to go out to your locations and speak to your front-line staff to find out what’s holding them back.
5. You’re not hearing any feedback
No news is good news right? Not necessarily, a retail OpEx strategy implementation is a big operation. Overhauling your business’s processes and procedures is a guaranteed way to get your staff talking. If you notice that feedback has slowed down completely, it could be because people aren’t focusing on your strategy anymore. Check in with staff and ask for feedback from the previous week so they can give you an honest review.
Our tips on how to successfully implement your operational excellence strategy
1. Provide training on your strategic objectives before you implement your strategy
The reason we say this is because when you set your overall objectives it can be easy for people to interpret them in different ways. When carrying out a company-wide transformation everyone must be on the same page. Inconsistencies and discrepancies can prevent you from achieving your desired results. Your training should focus on what the objectives actually mean and how they work to deliver the desired results
2. Get each level of management to generate their own plans or solutions for the strategy
By doing this you get buy-in from every level in your company, not just from head office. By letting your staff come up with their own ways of how they will achieve results it will increase ownership and accountability which in turn increases engagement. Your staff will be more likely to follow through with your strategy if they have had the chance to be involved. Once you have started your implementation you should share results between everyone, but don’t share the different plans and solutions as this could add confusion. If certain plans are working better than others you can intervene and change tactics to make everyone follow the most successful plan.
3. Having a solid way of tracking progress to ensure that your teams don’t lose focus
We know all too well that if people aren’t tracked and held accountable for their responsibilities things just don’t get done. You need a consistent way to track KPIs. This should be kept simple so that management always complete them and your records are always kept up to date. Our digital reports have customisable templates so that you can send them to everyone. Employees can simply tap or swipe to complete on a tablet or mobile device, meaning they can be completed anytime anywhere in a few minutes. You will get a colour coded overview of progress across the whole of your business.
In these reports you can also assign tasks for people with deadlines for when they have to complete them by. This is a quick and easy way to make sure everyone knows what needs to get done, by who and by when.
4. Reward your staff
To keep motivation alive, reward your staff when they hit certain milestones. Publicise their achievements in your internal comms so that others can see what success looks like. By rewarding your employees for their dedication to your operational excellence strategy it will motivate them to keep pushing for better results.
The truth is, implementing an operational excellence strategy is difficult. This is why it’s crucial to track and measure your tasks and results every step of the way. If you need help ensuring your employees get the job done and keeping their motivation alive see how our employee platform can help.
