Improving trading reporting to drive commercial performance

Ted Baker is a British luxury fashion brand operating over 500 branded stores and partner concessions worldwide.

Engaged by the CEO Rachel Osborne to establish consistent Trading reporting weekly and monthly. Deliverables were to ensure the KPIs and reports give insight into past and forecast future performance, enabling the right conversations and conclusions to steer the Trading performance and planning.

Led a project team of Commercial finance, Merchandising, eCommerce and Business Information to establish weekly and monthly packs with:

• New consistent hierarchies and layouts on time, product, channels and locations
• Trend analysis on sales, margin and stock with a forward view
• KPIs that unpack the margin performance and stock composition
• Customer and digital dashboards

So that the change is sustainable, also ensured that there is:

• A BI strategy in place to tackle issues such as historical seasonality reporting and to deliver automated reports
• A protocol for the weekly meetings to ensure everyone is clear on the aims and their role, so the meetings are productive with clear actions
• Stakeholder alignment and sign off from the CEO, CFO and Trading Director
• Ownership from the team to continue the development of performance reporting

Trading meetings are now much more productive, with the right issues being surfaced and tactical and strategic issues being addressed appropriately.