Shorter Planning, Better Management

The exceedingly dynamic environment in the retail industry represents significant new challenges for planning and steering concepts. During the course of a project focused on optimizing the planning and steering concept at Manor, the leading Swiss department store chain, new planning and steering instruments were implemented. Simultaneously, the time and effort required for preparing the existing financial budget was significantly reduced in order to free capacities for a new steering concept. A key element of the new planning and steering process is the rolling forecast, which is prepared by the sales team on a quarterly basis and represents an honest evaluation of the company’s performance. The forecast helps to identify changes in the business development and react accordingly by flexibly adjusting the resource management. New processes and instruments to determine and track binding measures and support a dynamic personnel planning process guarantee that gained insights are integrated into day-to-day operations. Our experience at Manor evidences that an improved planning and steering concept not only reduces the required time and effort for the preparation of the existing financial budget but also leads to measurable improvements in terms of revenue, margins, and costs. Our approach to introducing new planning and steering instruments and our experience in the implementation process will be illustrated in this contribution.