Change management and training at a global luxury retailer
A global luxury retailer was rolling out a new B2B order-entry platform, and the technology was the easy part. We led the change-management effort behind it, streamlined the processes around it, and built the training and community-of-practice culture that made the new way of working stick, alongside roughly $20M in annual savings and a 33% faster onboarding process.
A new platform only delivers if people change how they work around it. The rollout is the visible part. The change management is what decides whether it lands. A global luxury retailer was about to learn that distinction the hard way.
At the direction of the CIO, the retailer was launching an SEO-optimized B2B market order-entry and management platform to replace order processes and tools that had real pain points. New-hire application handling and onboarding were slow. Prior technology statements of work hid costs nobody had questioned. And none of the new technology would matter unless the organization actually adopted the new way of working.
We led the change behind it. We built the technology roadmap for the new B2B order platform and ran the change-management initiative around it, then did the unglamorous work that makes change durable. We audited existing and prior technology SOWs and surfaced over $500k in unjustified annual cost overruns. We created business-requirements documents and process maps that pinpointed the onboarding and application-handling workflows worth automating. And we designed and ran an agile training program and grew a community-of-practice culture, so the people doing the work had both the skills and the shared habits to keep improving after the project ended.
What the change produced
What the change produced
- Annual savings: roughly $20M a year
- Profit and loss: Grew from ~$90M to over $230M per year, including ~$25M incremental store sales
- Onboarding time: 33% faster
- Recovered cost overruns: ~$500k/yr surfaced and addressed
The savings and the growth followed because the organization adopted the change, not just the software. That is the part teams underestimate, and the part we focus on: training, process, and a culture of continuous improvement are what turn a new platform into a new way of working. The technology was the easy part. It usually is.