SSON’s Impact Awards are globally recognised, annual awards that honour and celebrate achievements across several different categories across four different regions in the world. Applications are evaluated by a judging panel made up of leading practitioners selected for their experience and are exemplary members of the services delivery community.

Here we share an edited version of Woolworth Group’s winning application for the Transformation & Change Management Impact award in Australia.

About Woolworths Group and their SSO

Woolworths employs an in-house Financial Shared Service model that is principally housed across 3 sites and, following the COVID-19 Pandemic, Woolworths is promoting flexible working arrangements that allows team members to perform their roles in geographical disparate locations.

Their various functions are responsible for:

• Overseeing the evaluation of $4bn in company-wide inventory.
• Processing of over 12.5 million AP invoices annually.
• Managing payments to over 20,000 suppliers annually.

These are a fraction of the many functions Woolworths' Finance Shared Sercice team members undertake. 

Below is a summary of their work throughout 2021 and what steps were taken in order to be globally recognised by SSON and leading industry experts alike for the Transformation & Change Management Impact Award 2021.

Objectives

In 2020, Woolworths embarked on their journey to transform their Accounts Receivable / Credit Management functions, aiming to ensure the functions were scalable and able to meet future demands of the group.

Woolworths wanted to improve their engagement with their customers when credit management recoveries were required, and deliver an industry leading team who reduced credit exposure for the Woolworths Group which ensured the removal of system barriers restricting future growth of customer account sales.

"It was critical that we provide transparency to the team from the outset." Said Robert Fellowes, Woolworths' Customer Focused Transaction Service Lead, "It underpins our broader philosophy of ensuring our teams are involved in all change."

Their aim was to create a culture and workplace whereby employees enjoyed working not only as advocates of Woolworths as an employer, but also have a passion for working in the Financial Shared Services.

The Change Management Models

Woolworths change approach consisted of:

• Interviews and engagement sessions with their team members, customers and other credit providers to involve them in strategy development and ensure the latter had a sense of ownership over any changes being implemented.
• Aligning the change journey with the team’s discretion, as well as providing upskilling courses from which the entire team could benefit as well as gain qualifications.
• Developing a high-level case for a change vision paper, including independent benchmarking of Woolworths' end-to-end processes by a third party to support the business case and change agenda.

The foundation of their transformation was a team and customer approach. Woolworths ensured they were transparent with their team on the potential impacts these changes could have on their company culture.

"With such a major change in the support model, we [Woolworths] felt we could not over communicate or over support," Robert Fellowes, Woolworths' Customer Focused Transaction Service Lead, commented.

He continued, "We provided our team with fully-funded training courses that gave them certified qualifications when completed."

All of the key operating metrics improved significantly across all key measures while their voice team metrics increased with a much more effective and engaged team as a result.

Benefits and Improvements

The transformational activities have delivered on many of the key objectives Woolworths wanted to achieve. Some examples of these are:

• Successful delivery of two new entry technical platforms that manage their end-to-end receivable functions.
• A highly matured engagement model with various business units within Woolworths Group.
• An improvement in the work culture where team members enjoy working with and for Woolworths within the credit management function.

Woolworths has seen an increase in team member engagement levels from a previous 62% to 90%, with 98% of the team indicating they would advocate Woolworths, its Financial Shared Services, and credit management teams as great places to work in.  

"We are passionate about the investment into our team members," stated Robert, "We have adopted a culture of developing people, with our team members leveraging their respective strengths to develop their peers."

With their matured engagement model, Woolworths has enhanced to a proactive partnership with their customers which focuses on experience and feedback, with a ‘Voice of Buisness Partner Score’ increasing from 78% to 90% in the past 12 months across a business size of 200k employees. The technical new entry platforms were critical to delivering a scalable solution and are now enabling new sales opportunities of approximately AUD$80m annually.

Don't forget to apply for the upcoming awards here!