Retail Department Stores
During a time of political and civil unrest in Zimbabwe, the Board of this chain of two retail department stores recognised the need to improve staff performance and stock management to ensure the stability and profitability of the business.
Detailed analysis highlighted the lack of supervision and management of the store assistants, little or no stock control and rotation, and inefficient back office administration and stock room processes.
Working closely with the front line management and top executive board, we delivered tailored supervisory and management development training, combined with designing and delivering management controls throughout the business.
This achieved significant productivity improvements including reducing the volume of obsolete stock through targeted discounting; freeing up stock room availability. Tighter stock rotation schedules to alleviate cash flow problems also ensured (where external economic factors were not a constraint) that out-of-stock situations of fast moving items were reduced or avoided.
