Visio Blog

I just got out of a meeting with our Operations Department and we have found that there has been some communication break downs from our Corporate Offices to our Stores. What we are seeing and hearing from our field managers is that our recently opened stores are not executing the processes that Kohl’s has in place properly. We are seeing in each new location that local management teams are executing the programs that we have in place improperly and doing these processes their own way. With Local Store Management doing this, we have seen our metrics in Customer Service Scores, Items Not on Sales Floor, and Inventory Performance slip at these individual locations; this is a huge problem that must be corrected before they start affecting our Bottom Line.

This problem is isolated to our most recently opened stores. Our “Legacy” stores have continued to stick to the processes that we have set out in place, but as we began our expansion that message seems to have been lost. In order to correct this problem and also prevent this from happening in any future expansion, our Operations Team has suggested that we create a Best Practices for each of our processes that we do at Kohl’s and create illustrated flow charts and diagrams so that they can be easily expressed and distributed to all of our staff. By having this system in place, we can visualize our concepts to all current and future employees so that we can ensure that each of our processes is executed seamlessly across all stores in our company. We feel strongly that the programs that we have studied and put in place are effective and this shows as our “Legacy” stores are outperforming those stores that deviate away from our processes and practices.  The deviation that has occurred at our recently opened stores has been due to the hiring of external candidates that are not familiar with our Kohl’s way. By each location management having different perspectives and experiences, they have implemented their own philosophies that do not mesh with our standards and procedures. This has the potential to be devastating as the customer is not receiving the correct Kohl’s Experience and will most likely be averse to shopping in an environment that does not meet our standards and expectations.

What we are suggesting is to invest into Microsoft’s Visual Drawing Tool called Visio. What Visio does is it lets us create visually appealing diagrams, flowcharts, and instructions that can be dispersed to our staff so that they can clearly grasp our ideas and processes. By having this tool and utilizing it to express our Best Practices, we can help ensure that each individual store and any future stores are adhering to our guidelines and doing things the Kohl’s Way. Since these diagrams and charts are so pleasantly appealing and easy to understand, it will make training for our Management Team and Associate base fun and easy. Every detail of any process can be visually represented so that it makes learning a breeze for anyone. Also, it can clear up any confusion as every step is detailed and represented.

The cost to purchase this program is $589 per subscription. We will need to have the subscription for each of our staff in the Training and Development Segment of our Operations Department. With a staff of 30, the initial investment of the software will cost us $17,700. We will need to train our staff and have them test out the software before we go live with its rollout. The Training and Development staff will be required to become very knowledgeable of the program and they will require more training on this than with a normal program. We will need to solicit the expertise from the Microsoft Staff to come in to train our employees. The time line we are expecting for all training is three weeks. We will break down our associate base into three-groups of ten and give them one week of training each. By doing so, we will be able to mitigate any lost productivity by taking our staff away from their normal assignments in order to train on this new software. The option to do the three-week training program with Microsoft is on the expensive side with a cost of $150,000, but this schedule will prevent us from losing value in lost productivity by doing the training in one bulk session. The cost allocated to each associate is $5,000 for a week’s long intensive training session.

After our Training and Development staff has gone through the proper training, we will have them spend one-to-two weeks on developing and converting our Best Practices into the Visio Program so that we are able to distribute the images to our staff. Instead of incurring cost with printing and shipping these images to our stores, we will be able to host them electronically on our Store-side website so that they can be easily accessed and printed locally at each store.  Once they have been hosted, we will allocate funding to all of our stores so that they can properly train and refresh our staff with our Best Practices. Funding for this refresh will cost $10,000 for our 100 stores. In order to ensure the proper training and steps have been taken, we will require that our current Store Auditors are observing Local Store Management and Associates of Best Practices and they will pass or fail a store based on their execution of Best Practices.

With an investment of close to $180,000 for the software program and all necessary training and completion of the diagrams and charts, we are optimistic that it will directly translate into increased sales at our “Legacy”, recently opened stores, and any future expansion of stores. As was mentioned before, we have been seeing drops in key metrics at are recently opened stores. These drops have been attributed to Local Stores not complying with the Best Practices that we have in place. This lack of execution has caused our Customer Service Scores, Items Not on Sales Floor, and Inventory Performance numbers to all decrease. All of these numbers are paramount in ensuring that our customers are getting the right Kohl’s Experience. Quite the opposite has occurred in our recent markets and we are concerned that if the ship is not righted now, it will lead to potential disasters and customers in these new markets will be turned off by our Brand. Doing so, will directly decrease sales and it will make it difficult to branch out and survive in these new markets.

The investment of $180,000 will be a one-time investment as the Best Practices will be standard for all current and future stores. Having these plans in place will ensure that proper execution is followed. By correcting the issues now in our current recently opened stores we expect a sales turnaround of 15% by year’s end. This amounts to a recapture of $50,000. In one year, we also expect that our Inventory Performances will increase and it will save each of our 100 stores an average $10,000 in lost goods. By ensuring that our Items Not on Sales Floor report trends downward and more goods hit the floor, we can expect in one year that we see all of our stores increase sales a total of $50,000. With recapturing the value totaled for all stores, in one year we expect a return of $200,000. The investment will pay itself off in one year and by having these programs and visual learning guides in place we can help ensure that all current stores will continue to grow at a healthy rate each year with our programs and it will also help future expansion as any future locations will be able to function seamlessly with the Best Practices that we have implemented.