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Foundational Excellence
Assuring Sustainable and Profitable Growth

December 2008

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Page 2 of 2 “Change is Hard” and people, especially leaders, were resistant to change. The reality was that most employees did not understand it, did not believe it, and did not do it. The Head, The Heart and The Hands were not in alignment.

Change management experts were brought in to work with the leadership at the corporate office, retail stores and with all support groups. Getting the leadership to believe in the change was a roadblock to success. To help overcome the roadblocks, minimize frustration and improve speed, change implementation teams (CITs) were developed to help express, model, reinforce and measure the change.

The entire transformation took over two years but through this agonizing experience, Best Buy’s leaders learned how to implement change and reduce the time needed for strategy development, strategy implementation and successful strategy execution.

To realize and sustain growth and achieve profitable outcomes the core foundations of the company had to be strengthened. It was a key to success.


Eldorado Company, Russia

Similar to Best Buy after 11 years of unprecedented growth Eldorado had experienced rapid expansion, growing to over 800 stores, yet the total business was not growing profitably. In 2006 EMG contracted with Eldorado to evaluate their business and help them understand what steps they needed to take in order to bring their business model up to international best practice standards and return their business to growth with profitability.

Significant weaknesses were identified in the foundational core of their business.

There were significant problems with their inventory management process. There were virtually no capabilities for demand planning, product instocks and at-risk inventory management. This resulted in a high level of out of stocks, poor sales and profit performance, unmanageable at-risk inventory and an eroding customer experience and loyalty.

There was no discipline around Category Management. While the business was structured around major categories and sub-categories, CM was not understood or used to build a solid product process. There was no assortment planning process and resulting broad product lineups did not tie to space. Also assortments did not align with a promotional calendar creating many customer disappoints on advertised products.

Gaining leadership alignment and support to build a strong foundation of reliable processes, procedures and systems were critical to success.

Additional information on the Eldorado project can be found in Case Study.


Page 1 | Page 2 Eames Management Group