Project management

Accelerating digital transformation: a major growth driver

A major mail-order outdoor plant brand wanted to become the market leader online. To successfully transform its business model, the company leveraged the expertise and methods of globalise interim professionals.

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The challenge

A family-run SME, leading brand of mail-order outdoor plants.

Placed under legal protection (French “safeguard procedure”) two years previously
A slow start to online sales, taking 10 years to grow from 5% to 22% of total revenues
Main barriers to digital development: technical difficulties and a lack of digital skills internally

Still fragile, the company needed to quickly accelerate its development and pay back its creditors. After making an expert diagnosis, globalise undertook a plan of action aiming to:

Boost online sales
Adapt the organization to the digital transition underway
Improve the company’s financial health

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The solution

Three globalise interim professionals (a restructuring expert, a web project manager and a web marketer) got to work on:

Rethinking the company’s offering, targeting (a younger clientele) and customer focus
Redesigning its web offering, improving the website and adapting its e-marketing methods, based on a benchmark of the best practices of the company’s competitors and online leaders
Reducing seasonal variations in sales for better performance year-round
Engaging teams in a vision and a results-based approach
Coaching employees to acquire new methods
Supporting the new strategic direction, particularly the decline in the mail-order business and the change in culture
Restoring financial flexibility (sales of real-estate assets, refinancing, etc.)
Negotiating and implementing a creditor payment schedule

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The results

At the end of this six-month assignment, all the key performance indicators were positive:

The share of online sales jumped from 22% to 35%
Profitability improved
The new customer-focused website, which was now optimized and state-of-the-art in terms of web marketing, was attracting and engaging an ever-growing and younger clientele
The management team gained a new impetus and employees throughout the company showed professionalism and motivation in adapting to the online business > The financial strategy paid off