In partnership with:
An Introduction to our Retail Practice, 2015
We would love to introduce Q5 to you
Experienced. Networked. Committed.
Q5 is an innovative, award-winning consulting firm, that specialises in
organisation change in Retail, Media, Financial Services and Infrastructure.
Our exceptional consultants and project 'deliverers' are experts in Strategy,
Organisation Design, Programme Management, Leadership Development and
Change Management. Our clients, global top tier executives, commission Q5
to help their people "dare to dream", "transform", "think the unthinkable" and
"deliver outstanding results" through an accelerated change process. These
are their words. This is our world. We would love you to explore it.
We bring a fresh approach and have the drive, determination and motivation
to provide you with a great outcome. We would love to work with you.
“The organisation insight we received
has been instrumental in helping us to
make some key business decisions. I
wouldn't hesitate to call upon Q5 again‘’
Kevin Barrett, Director of Strategy
and Store Formats, Sainsbury's
“Q5 has been instrumental in
helping us to transform the way we do
things at the Guardian. I trust them:
they are challenging but also sensitive
to the creative culture of our
organisation. I would not hesitate in
recommending them.
Alan Rusbridger
Editor-in-Chief, the Guardian
“Winner - Best New
Consultancy”
MCA Judging Panel, 2013
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Q5 Retail Value Chain
Q5 is intimately involved in the Retail industry. Having
worked across a number of markets and product sectors
globally, our team of Retail specialists have become
renowned for their delivery of considered, honest, expert
advice, which ensures that our clients continue to move
forward in this ever challenging environment.
Q5 has worked with an array Global Retail Brands on a
host of challenges related to the below value chain:
We understand the market
The Retail market is continually evolving, consumer
choice is expanding rapidly, platforms and channels are
merging, and retailer strategies, structures, ways of
working, formats and offerings are having to adapt,
change and get ahead in order to stay relevant and have
purpose. The era of customers being able to “choose any
colour so long as it’s black” seems prehistoric. Instead,
retailers must be proactive in their offerings in order
optimise the market change.
That being said, the fundamental principles of Retail
remain true:
 Listen to your Customers
 Value your People
 Innovate
 Act with Integrity
 Build robust Operating Models and Processes
 Deliver for Owners & Share Holders
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Areas of expertise
STRATEGY
 We help our clients think big and achieve their potential. Whether it’s
understanding the drivers of your business, responding to market challenges or
embarking on M&A activity, our Strategy Unit can assist in your quest for
unique and sustainable competitive advantage. It's about creating strategies
that are clear, implementable and that deliver results.
STRUCTURE
 Our approach to design places our clients at the heart of the process. We
provide rigour; our methods and OD toolkit are frequently described as ‘the
best around’. We challenge; our work is built from a basis in hard fact and
always involves a thorough internal and external assessment of your business.
PROCESS
 We support clients to change the way they do things both in the processes
specific to their business and within their enabling or support processes such as
performance management, recruitment or three year planning. We do not
create mountains of process maps, which all too often get left unused on a
shelf, we work with you to decide what work needs to get done where in the
organisation to ensure everyone is clear about ownership of tasks and
understands their role.
 As in our org design work we can benchmark key processes to help you decide
what is right for you, model appropriate volumes, and develop key measures of
success.
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Areas of expertise - cont.
PEOPLE
 Organisational success is directly linked to how enabled and engaged your
people are. We work with our clients to help people to ‘think’, ‘feel’ and ‘do’
things differently, encouraging them to connect with the values and behaviours
of the organisation. This might be through a leadership development
programme, by helping you align your organisation’s culture, or in the way
performance, talent and succession is managed. We bring experience of what
we have seen works, what doesn’t work and we ALWAYS listen to what is going
on in your organisation. We do not come with any preconceived ideas about
what will work.
CHANGE
 Change is a constant for all businesses. We support our clients to manage
change to their advantage, to understand what it feels like to experience
change and to build the skills they need internally to manage change. We
shape, plan, communicate and monitor the change they are undergoing with
them.
 Making change stick requires putting the power to change in the hands of your
employees and ensuring that the change is reflected in all that you do. We use
a variety of techniques and interventions to hold a mirror up to your business
so it can see how well it is doing.
 To complement our change management activities we understand the need to
govern the delivery of the work. We offer a programme management function
from conducting programme health checks, through to running a fully fledged
programme management office.
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How we work
We don't pretend that we know your business better than
you, or that we can be all things to all people ... but we do
make the following promise:
If you choose to work with Q5 you can be sure of:
 Collaborative working: joint teams, clear outcomes,
agreed benefits and shared success
 Breadth and depth: we bring the right talent, with
the right experience to bring genuine insight to bear on
the work we do with you
 Pace: we know that your time is precious and getting
results quickly matters. Our working style enables this
with clear approaches and defined return on investment
objectives
Working with Q5 is about true partnership; our
success is based on helping you successfully
resolve the issues you face. We would love to
work with you.
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 Clarity: we work with you to help you make the decisions
that are right for your organisation and the situation you
find yourself in.
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Some of our clients
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In partnership with:
RETAIL CASE STUDIES
Boots: Creating a Digital Workplace
What was the challenge?
 As part of a wider transformation across its business, Boots had created a programme to digitise the
workplace. This included providing a shared information portal and an Enterprise social media platform
to allow their colleagues to collaborate across their functions. This was new territory and so they
needed assistance with defining the benefits to the business of such a change and developing the
programme plan to ensure success.
What we did?
 We conducted a review of the programme, examining the Roadmap and timelines. From this we
designed trials and made recommendations to ensure the programme would meet it agreed deadline
 From our workshops, we identified opportunities to improve the programme governance, redesigning
the structure to provide better reporting and proper oversight from the senior leadership
 Working with IT and Finance, we created the Benefits Case, focusing on the transformative effect of
digitisation on the organisation
What was the outcome?
 A vision for the Digital Workplace Programme that guided the project team and could be fully
communicated to its governance structure
 A Benefits Case that positively influenced the senior leadership, convincing them of the need to support
the drive for a digital workplace
 A new Roadmap that synchronised rollout of various digital projects that before had existed in silos
 A fully supported Trials Plan, that would allow the business to both test the system and win support for
its digital transformation
 The Project Team now had a far clearer direction and were able to secure investment and institute
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Sainsbury’s: Clicks & Bricks Merchandising Restructure
What was the challenge?
 Sainsbury’s were dissatisfied with the performance of their online general merchandise sales. Q5 were
commissioned to provide a “fleet-of-foot” study of how other clicks & mortar General Merchandise
retailers structured their merchandising teams to deliver their online proposition.
What we did?
 Our benchmarking team worked with the Sainsbury’s strategy team to identify a number of
comparative organisations. Q5 conducted data gathering from primary and secondary sources.
 The report focused on:
 Size of Buying & Merchandising functions (in FTEs and cost per annum)
 Size of Online team (in FTEs and cost per annum)
 Shape / configuration of team
 Governance structure
 Overall pros and cons of the different approaches
What was the outcome?
 Our final report focused on 5 comparative organisations. The information was used by the Sainsbury’s
board to help determine the most appropriate structure for the online general merchandising team (i.e.
centralised ‘clicks & bricks’ vs stand alone ‘online’).
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Post Office: ExCo Development
What was the challenge?
 The Post Office have gone through significant change in recent years as they begin their journey of
transformation to a self-funding, commercial organisation both organisationally but also in terms of
new people joining the organisation. The CEO, Paula Vennells was keen as part of this journey to get
her leadership team to work differently and more effectively.
What we did?
 We developed a programme of leadership development sessions for the Executive Committee to help
them think about themselves as role models in the business and to focus on ‘how they worked
together’. The outcomes of the first two sessions were cascaded to the Top 50 by running a facilitated
session with this group. Each session required preparation with the HR Director, CEO and individual
Executive members.
 With our support, the ExCo worked together to build a shared understanding and approach to key
areas including:
 The collective task of ExCo (The ExCo Job) – and associated accountabilities
 Diagnosis of current ExCo performance against the attributes of high performing executive teams.
Identifying future opportunities for improvement
 Bringing the PO behaviours to life in the ExCo and beyond
What was the outcome?
 An aligned executive committee that had begun to have the conversation about how to act as
appropriate role models in the new Post Office world. An executive group who were beginning to work
together in a different way.
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lastminute.com: Embedding a new strategy
What was the challenge?
 Q5 were called in to help a new CEO deliver a refreshed strategy to turn the business around. The
challenge was to turn a fragmented, complex organisation into a focused and unified team that had
clarity of purpose and operations. We were asked to make this happen by applying our expertise of
organisational change and cultural engagement; and for our consulting style of partnership combined
with constructive challenge.
What we did?
 We worked in 3 phases to embed change throughout the organisation:
 Created unity and alignment with the Executive team.
 Worked with the Top 50 managers to define what needed to change and build ownership.
 Ensured all employees were clear on what they needed to do to differently and why, through a series of
all-staff ‘People Power’ workshops.
 This was delivered alongside, and with, the lastminute.com employees, though interactive workshops
which defined how the new business would operate and how each individual would change their
behaviours to implement the new strategy. We developed materials to bring the organisation to life
and explain everybody’s role. These materials now form a key part of new employee induction.
What was the outcome?
 The results were a more engaged workforce, delivering the new strategy by working differently, and
much improved financial figures (EBITDA). There is now a dedicated ‘engagement team’ made up of a
group of high potential staff to drive through further improvements.
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Argos: Building OD Capability
What was the challenge?
 Argos identified the need to develop a new Operating Model for its Business to take significant cost out
of its structure. They needed to manage an Organisation Design process to find the savings within two
months. Argos had it’s own internal OD team who they wanted us to support with a robust
methodology and capacity.
What we did?
 Q5 provided a rigorous approach and OD best practice to facilitate the development of the new
Operating Model, aligned with the future Mission and with the Business Strategy, to find the future
savings.
 Developed detailed job designs that reflected accurately the future work required and how it would
affect other parts of the organisation.
 Created a sustainable organisational design Change Control Process and actively worked to transfer OD
knowledge and capabilities to the permanent OD team ensuring we were able to leave on time as
agreed on the output of the proposal.
What was the outcome?
 An upskilled internal OD team, using a refreshed toolkit
 Cost reduction target achieved with clear baseline established
 Robust changed control process to track implementation
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A FTSE 100 Retailer: Global HR Restructuring
What was the challenge?
 The CEO of this FTSE 100 Retailer took the business on a fantastic growth journey. They aimed to
double in size within three years, and push into the FTSE 50.
 They have gone through a major rebranding exercise over the past few years and are shifting their
operating model from 30% to 70% retail requiring a fundamental change in the way the business is run
and the capabilities they need as a business.
 They are a global business covering Europe, AsiaPac, America & Latin America. Having focused on the
‘front office’ hard, the CEO turned her focus to the enabling functions to ensure they were fit to support
the new organisation.
What we did?
 Working for the Chief People Officer, we worked with the global HR function to redesign the HR
operating model.
 Over the course of three months we: helped them assess their ‘As Is’ position and baseline within HR
across the globe, through a series of 1:1 interviews with their customers and ExCo members and an
online scan.
 We ran a facilitated design process with their global design team to confirm the future vision for HR,
guiding principles, core processes, operating model, structural options, roles & responsibilities, core
capabilities & HR measures required.
 We programme managed the HR change for them to ensure appropriate stakeholder communication
throughout the course of the project.
What was the outcome?
 Refreshed HR operating model agreed with in the business.
 Core organisation wide high level processes mapped for resourcing, talent management &
performance management.
 New global HR organisation structure agreed and sized.
 Implementation plan developed to ensure transition from current to future state.
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In partnership with:
The Team
Some of the Q5 team
Olly Purnell
Daniel Upward
Andy Cottrill
Olly is the Managing Partner of Q5. His
core expertise lies in organisation design
and restructuring – enabling leaders to
align their people, the work that they do,
and the way that they do it, to deliver
their overall strategic vision.
Recent clients: Sainsbury’s, Boots, BBC,
News UK, News Corp, ITV, Disney and
Argos.
Head of Retail at Q5. He has helped lead
business
change
enablement
programmes,
developed
and
implemented leadership strategy and
managed large teams within central and
field functions. Pre Q5, he worked for:
House of Fraser, Tesco and Marks &
Spencer.
Recent clients: Arcadia, Boots, and
Sainsbury’s.
Andy is a proven change agent with
organisation innovation experience from
across retail, print, digital and TV media
organisations. Andy developed his skills
in the financial services practice of
Accenture
and
across
the
UK
Government and the Media Industry.
Recent clients: john varvatos, Instyle,
NBC News, Travelocity, lastminute.com
and News Corporation.
Tom Leary
Claire Hamlin
Victoria Alderson
Tom is an Associate Partner at Q5. Tom’s
areas of expertise include: business
transformation
design
and
implementation; team leadership &
development; project & portfolio
management and senior stakeholder
relationship management.
Recent clients: Marks & Spencer, News
UK, Wincanton, World Bank, Royal Mail
and Disney.
Claire leads our change enablement
practice and has deep expertise in
organisational development and change
leadership. Claire specialises in learning
technologies and led BP’s eLearning
strategy for a number of years prior to
joining Q5.
Recent clients: British Gas, Tate & Lyle,
British Council and Arcadia.
Victoria is a consultant at Q5. Prior to
joining Q5 she worked as a senior
marketing executive at Incisive Media she holds a First Class BA (Hons) in
Marketing and Management. Victoria
developed her knowledge of the retail
sector working as a Commercial
Manager for Marks & Spencer.
Recent clients: Arcadia, News UK, Bupa
and Crown Worldwide Group.
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We would love to work with you
To get the best value out of any consulting firm, it's important
to be clear about ..
 why you are buying their services
 what you want the work to achieve
 what skills and capabilities you are getting from the team.
We're always happy to have an informal discussion with potential
clients to talk through your requirements and what we can or
can’t offer.
Do not hesitate to contact one of our offices:
London: +44 (0)20 7340 0660
New York: +1 (646) 569-9198
Olly:
Daniel:
Tori:
Oliver.Purnell@q5partners.com
Daniel.Upward@q5partners.com
Victoria.Alderson@q5partners.com
UK address:
Q5
Little Tufton House
3 Dean Trench Street
London, UK
We look forward to hearing from you!
www.q5partners.com
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