An export / import company located in New Delhi. Premium exporters of home furnishings and textiles- ventured into the Indian retail segment approx. 5 Years back with premium home furnishings and interiors – (>500 employees- management, sales and retail, factory level etc. approx. turnover 350 Cr)


Problem Areas

• Management plans to downsize in their retail division. Recognition and retention of performing employees a major criteria.
• Key sales employees at retail outlets coming from different demographic backgrounds threatening to leave.
• Lack of proactive leaders among retail managers especially with regards to crisis management- employees leaving.
• Demands from customers, customer dissatisfaction.

Current Situation Analysis - Human Resource Audit

• Number of employees in each division - performing and non performing
• Identifying key sales personnel from different demographic backgrounds and their feedback
• Contribution to company revenues by the sales team at each retail outlet
• Appraisal method and incentives given- Sales made at retail outlets are recorded and tracked using Retailpro , an erp software that allows each key sales personnel to key in the number of sales made by then per day. This software is used to track if sales people have met targets and incentives are awarded based on achievements.
• KPI’s and KRA’s of managers at retail outlets. Their current deliverables and attrition under each manager.
• Customer satisfaction index indirectly gauged by number of complaints, feedback mechanisms through feedback registers at each outlet.

Consulting Project Charter

• Created a Balanced Score Card on the lines of Norton and Kaplan
• Create an initial measurements process to assist managers in leading their organizations; provide dashboard information to upper-level management and executives.
• Reviewed the measurements and processes with managers to gain concurrence prior to implementing tracking processes and systems.
• Survey to validate that measurements are being used and useful; modify, add or delete metrics to help better manage business objectives.
• Balanced Scorecard for Application Delivery was designed around four quadrants:
  - Delivery
  - Productivity
  - Quality
  - Financials
• Performed a study on the status of each project of the company and gave them a performance graph as following.

The Solution

The use of ERP package Retailpro ensured correct tracking of sales and inventory management at HQ, however at the Point of Sales (PoS)it was found that the sales personnel were not trained to use the software. The result- incentive payment was often incorrect and stealing of sales made by other personnel was found to be a cause of great discontent.

VNV proposed the following:

• Training and leadership coaching in emerging workforce solutions and communication to all managers in different retail outlets to help them in managing demographically divergent employees in their own outlets.
• The managers were given the responsibility of ensuring that each personnel would have a log in id and be formally trained on the erp package. A timeline of 1 month was given for them to identify training requirements and were instructed to create a timetable for the same.
• Customer feedback as well as sales tracking enabled the identification of performing personnel. Customer feedback being extremely important especially since it was found there was wrong usage of Retailpro at PoS.
• Management decided to remove all nonperforming staff with minimal fuss.

At Present

Downsizing activity of the organization is complete and at present leadership coaching and new workforce training is in progress.