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“a litmus test that we hold up against any initiatives that we want to land on.
“We ask ourselves, ‘will it be better for customers, simpler for our team and make our business stronger?’ Ultimately, you’re looking for three green ticks.”
Either side of August’s conference, PlaceMakers has been rolling out some new ways of working across the network, including the merging of Merchandise and Sales and investment in Sales & Operations Planning, and at the heart of it is this messaging.
“Better: Simpler: Stronger” is about aligning everyone
– in branches, trade support, sales, operations, accounts and leadership – not to mention being useful when talking on-site or with customers.
‘“Better: Simpler: Stronger’ is an overarching framework that will drive good customer focus, good focus for enabling our teams, and drive productivity and good execution,” says Shane Cornelius.
This new mantra is also somewhat about resetting the business: “We’ve just been through 30 months of chaos. So this is the perfect time for everyone to reset, be clear on what the North Star is for the business and make sure that they are clear on what their role is and how they add value.”
Expect to see a lot of if not the actual mantra of “Better: Simpler: Stronger” around the PlaceMakers network then its effects from now on.
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I caught up with Fletcher Distribution Chief Executive Bruce McEwen post-conference.
“Better: Simpler: Stronger” is “not so much a revolution as being very clear about what’s important
to us and where we spend our time,” he underlines.
“I think we’ve
all been managing crises and got good at managing crises.
“Now we need to get back to what it is that customers need and
how we take away their pain points. How do we provide a seamless and timely service?”
Conference was also about celebrating success.
“It’s been a really tough year, a very disrupted year,” says Bruce.
“We spent a lot of time in lockdown and then of course we had that surge of demand.
“The reality is, as a collective supply chain across the industry, we couldn’t cope, and the wheels wobbled – they fell off in some cases – and we had real shortages.
“It was a market that none of us had prepared for.
“So conference was about bringing people back
together, and celebrating a really strong result, despite the disruptions, and being clear about what is ahead and what’s important to us.”
What’s important to PlaceMakers is its customers and, with customer engagement and to some extent customer loyalty having experienced some blips over the Covid period thanks to issues of supply and serial inflation, Bruce McEwen’s outlook is clear: learn from the experience and move on.
As he said at a supplier session during conference: “This is our world, get used to it [and] work with it, get really good at working with it – if you don’t work with it, someone else will,” he said, underlining the need for “everyone, every day to deliver on our service promise.”
“Yes, there will be issues – learn from the last two years and get on the front foot,” he said, challenging the audience to use the next 12 months to “get match fit to make sure we win more than the rest.”
At the end of the day, customers will make their own choices about who to do
business with, according to their own priorities.
As a result, “We need to make sure that the things which are important to them are what we are good at,” says Bruce McEwen, back in Auckland.
“And that’s where our focus lies.”
In three words, becoming: “Better: Simpler: Stronger.”
20 NZHJ | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2022 MORE AT www.hardwarejournal.co.nz
placemakers 2022