Retail Acumen would approach your project in the same way we would with any of our customers - that is to work with you, your teams and your business partners as closely as possible. All of the Retail Acumen consultants (our trusted experts) are experienced practitioners with a deep working knowledge of retail. This "Retail Acumen" enables them to engage with your stakeholders at all levels, to talk your business language, and to become 'part of the furniture' relatively quickly. This ability to seamlessly integrate into your business operations enables the delivery of rapid and visible results and sets Retail Acumen apart from other consulting organisations.

Additionally, to further support your business needs, Retail Acumen offer a far wider range of capabilities than that which the core consulting team alone can deliver. We have developed partnerships with select organisations that provide complementary services and solutions. In this way through recommendations and referrals to our customers we are able to satisfy a far wider range requirements, and enable you to realise greater benefits, more rapidly.

Retail Acumen's simple methodology is designed to support retail organisations in initiating, developing and implementing change projects across processes, systems and organisation structure.

The three elements - Analysis, Recommendation, Change - ensure a consistent approach to projects and change management, allowing for a modular, 'pick and mix' approach depending on how far progressed you already are.

At Retail Acumen we believe that implementing change quickly, effectively and delivering rapid benefits realisation gives you competitive advantage. Equally we recognise that taking on too much change at once is often a contributory factor to project failure. In our experience the most successful projects are tackled in manageable, 'bite sized chunks', fitting in with your operational pressures, delivered quickly and effectively and by the appropriately skilled resources working alongside your team. These projects tend to quickly become self-sustaining, with the initial return on investment funding subsequent initiatives.

Every Retail Acumen assignment begins with our team spending an appropriate amount of time with you to get a deeper understanding of the problem or opportunity you are facing.

Where you have the information available we would review such things as your company aims and objectives, your departmental strategies, your 3-5 year plans, your company vision and very importantly who your key stakeholders are.

This research coupled with discussions with your key stakeholders enables us to piece together a picture of the needs and wants of your business, and what acceptable outcomes might look like for you. In addition this phase often includes detailed work to quantify the business benefits of tackling the problem, or exploiting the opportunity, to enable you to have a level of prioritisation where a number of problems or opportunities exist.

At the end of the analysis phase you will be provided with a detailed report, and after a review with your key stakeholders, subject to your satisfaction in our work, then the next phase, 'Recommendation' is kicked off.

With most customers after our successful completion of the analysis phase we begin the 'Recommendation Phase'.

In this phase we use the information gathered in the analysis phase to create a set of recommendations for you. Depending on your preference that could be 2-3 options with associated pros and cons or it could simply be the solution we consider to best meet your needs and any criteria you have stipulated such as costs, payback period, implementation timescales, level of change, impact, risk etc.

These recommendation(s) are usually presented back to your steering group (or similar) for discussion. When you have had time to consider the output and determine what next steps you would ideally like to take, you would progress to our next phase, the most challenging and demanding of them all - 'Change'.

At the end of the 'Recommendation Phase' you would progress to the 'Change Phase'.

In the 'Change Phase' we work with you to put in place a formal project management controls - essentially a full lifecycle project management approach from project definition through to project review post-implementation.

Change is by far the most demanding step, needing the widest range of skills and resources, yours and ours, to support you achieve the exceptional results we promised!

Retail Acumen recognising that there will always be some people in your business who are resistant to change, so we manage issues through with you and the appropriate stakeholders depending on the underlying reason for the resistance. In our experience we have found that through good communications and education most people in an organisation do see the value of a project to the overall success of the business, even if they do not enjoy the experience of change themselves.

Finally, we believe that whilst your organisation may present us with a wealth of opportunities for multiple concurrent projects it is our experience that success tends to come from delivering in 'bite sized chunks'. This means that whilst we may take note of all the inter-dependent opportunities you have (usually during the analysis and recommendation phases) we do not attempt to implement too much with you at once. Rarely do your operational teams have the capacity to devote adequate time and attention to multiple projects and also sustain a high level of performance in the day job. Tackling projects in manageable steps has a lower impact on your internal teams, both from a work-load and change tolerance perspective. It also enables projects to become self-sustaining - such that the first initiative in your improvement programme delivers sufficient benefit to effectively fund the following initiatives.

If you would like to discuss our methods, and find out more about how we work with our customers, please feel free to contact us. We are also very happy for you to speak to our current and past customers should you wish.