Page 20 - HW FEB 2021
P. 20

hard talking
                                                         How Mitre 10 is transforming for the future
Last year, Mitre 10 NZ’s CEO, Chris Wilesmith, shared a new strategic direction for the 46-year-old cooperative. 12 months on, Steve Bohling finds out more about where the co-op is heading.
AS SIGNALLED LAST year, Mitre 10 New Zealand is not only 12 months into a major five-year business transformation project but is also starting off on a new 10-year strategic journey to shape the future-readiness of the business.
As Chris Wilesmith said in our February 2020 interview: “We’ve got a very healthy business as it stands.
“It’s not broken, but we’re also hearing a desire from the members to be better now and to be even more successful in the future.”
The transformation referred to above is said to involve “the single biggest investment in the history of Mitre 10” and, already a year into this transformative process, the cooperative has
set about redesigning its operating model, aiming to “drive efficiency, reduce cost and empower teams to focus on doing the right things for customers to create a frictionless experience”.
Keen to add some further detail to this big picture stuff, we caught up with the cooperative’s trans-Tasman commuting CEO in mid-January.
Of course, the other big news pre-Christmas, was that, having in September indicated a permanent return to Australia, Chris is continuing as the cooperative’s CEO, following the easing of trans-Tasman border restrictions.
DELIVERING “GREAT EXPERIENCES”
Having completed year one of this five-year programme, Mitre 10 NZ is putting a “very significant investment” into systems that deliver “great experiences”, both externally and internally.
“It’s as much about a team member loving the environment,
loving being able to provide solutions to customers and loving what they do,” says Chris Wilesmith, “because a lot of people that work in our industry are passionate about doing things in their environment. And so there’s a real connection.
“The reality is, for us to be successful in the future, we’ve got to have teams that find us to be an irresistible workplace and customers who visit us digitally or physically and say, ‘Wow, wasn’t that easy? I got what I wanted. I got more than was expecting’.”
In terms of defining those expectations, a series of workshops identified six key areas which the Mitre 10 NZ CEO calls “strategic pillars”:
1. Experience – Everything we do for our customers to have a
great experience, digitally or physically, across all channels;
OMNI-centred customer connection.
2. Solutions – Really understanding the evolution of what
customers need, not just products but combinations of
 18 NZHJ | FEBRUARY 2021
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