About the Client
Founded in 2006, Home Retail Group is the UK’s leading home and general merchandise retailer. It is the parent group company of Argos and Homebase.
The Challenge
With over 1,000 stores nationwide, 48,000 employees and 67,000 products from a global supply base, good sourcing and supplier relationship management is critical to their success. Home Retail Group engaged Xoomworks to develop category specific training for its buyers, focusing on Home Retail Group’s category planning process, and training and coaching focused upon stakeholder engagement.
The Solution
Xoomworks worked closely with the Head of Procurement, Sam de Frates, to understand the culture within the procurement team and the wider business, as well as the stakeholder challenges faced by the team and the current level of knowledge and expertise within the team. Home Retail Group Procurement were tasked with ensuring better business engagement, better market engagement with suppliers to understand trends and innovation and finally to ensure that good procurement practice was embedded within the team. Xoomworks used its Complete Procurement framework, which addresses the behavioural elements of procurement as well as the mechanics, and created a tailored procurement training curriculum that addressed three key areas.
“Xoomworks were able to quickly understand my challenges and the need to upskill the category teams with some of the basics around category planning and stakeholder engagement.”
Download the client story to read more about improved procurement and category planning knowledge.
