People Before Process. Process Before Technology.

Executive Summary

Consumer goods organisations have never had access to more powerful retail execution technology, and many are still failing to see the commercial return they expected from it.

This white paper draws together ten perspectives from Chase’s work advising Consumer Goods organisations on Commercial Planning and Retail Execution transformation. Its central argument is simple, and consistent across every chapter that follows:

“People create commercial outcomes. Technology enables them.”

Across every market and every organisation we work with, the pattern repeats. Budgets are approved. Platforms are implemented. Dashboards go live. Twelve months later, adoption has plateaued, managers have reverted to old habits, and the commercial benefits promised in the business case have failed to materialise. The instinctive response is to blame the technology. Our experience suggests otherwise: the challenge almost always begins much earlier, in the way organisations think about the people expected to change.

This paper sets out why that happens, and what world-class organisations do differently. It explores:

• The Retail Execution Illusion, why programmes succeed or fail long before technology is switched on.
• The end user as a strategy, why transformation must be designed around the people who deliver it every day.
• Why technology alone cannot create great sales teams, and the capabilities that actually differentiate performance.
• Why adoption still fails, and the adoption curve every leadership team should understand.
• The People First Framework™, Chase’s operating model for sustainable transformation.
• The role of change leadership, not just project management, in embedding new behaviour.
• The forgotten role of the front-line manager, the single biggest multiplier of adoption.
• What good actually looks like, through the Retail Execution Excellence Model™.
• The Chase Transformation Method™, an eight-phase approach that puts behaviour before technology.
• The Chase perspective on where the industry goes next, and the leadership legacy that outlasts any platform.