May 2022
Creating strategic value from operational change
Founded in 1945, Inverarity Morton is Scotland’s leading independent wine and spirit merchant. The Covid-19 pandemic was a very unstable period for all businesses, but particularly so for Inverarity Morton due to the firm’s close alignment with the hospitality industry. As a traditionally offline business with several legacy system issues and ways of working, they had no digital presence or way of moving to an online sales model.
Scope of work
Inverarity Morton asked for our help to navigate to a new operating environment with the potential to reach clients online. The business assumed that this would centre around the creation of a trade website, however the real issue was a need for value intervention.
Implement of a sea change was required across the entire business which would create value for clients as well as realise operational efficiencies. This was not about simply implementing technology change but looking at a new organisational perspective which would ensure that opportunities to create value were optimised.
This focused on investing heavily in the culture of the business and maximising the potential value of its people. Assessing the appetite for change and the digital literacy of employees was a key step in creating value.
Programme of work
The overall programme centred around a strategic view of current capabilities and the identification of critical processes, data and architecture that would support new technology and provide opportunities to create more value for clients.
As a complex organisation, Inverarity Morton had many manual processes in place, with several workarounds for gaps in their operating model, as well as a lack of appetite for change amongst the workforce.
By investing in value intervention workshops, any concerns around impending changes were surfaced and this supported employee engagement, cross functional capabilities and better governance around the wider processes that would support digitalisation. Ultimately supporting the people with, or needing, the skills required to manage any technology that is introduced.
Results
By focusing on the root cause of the challenges faced, the complex operating model, and the overarching culture, we uncovered other existing issues that were causing inefficiencies. This provided insight that will not only reach beyond a new trade portal or online presence, but be used to underpin decision making and support process re-engineering, identify further opportunities for change, and help with cultural adoption of new ways of working.
Looking at the business from a wider perspective is where you find the true value.