Olivia is the store manager of a women's clothing retailer, Extreme Fashions. She has been managingher store's Operational Plan, but over the past few months' things haven't been going quite as planned.

Olivia has done well in exceeding her Sales KPI each month. She has received her budget from Head Office and she is $24,000 up on budget for the season so far, with six months left to go.

Her budget was $38,500 in sales for one month and her actual is sitting at $42500. If this continues for the remaining 6 months, she could finish the season up $48,000 on budget.

All her team members are performing really well, however, are quite stressed given they didn't expect to be so busy. They've been trying to juggle too many customers at once and, given that the store's been so busy, the team haven't been able to complete their tasks outside of customer service.The team feel like they aren't provided with much support and there is no plan to manage the large workload moving forward. Olivia had made the executive decision to ensure that customers were the number one priority - even if it meant forgoing other tasks until she was able to develop a contingency plan.

Olivia is still using the 'base roster' (the stock standard roster) developed by the person who last managed the store six months ago (see tables below).She didn't want to shake things up too much when she came into the team, so decided to leave it the way it was and see how things played out. It's become pretty clear that the number of people rostered per day isn't based around the sales figures or tasks that need to be completed. Olivia knows this will need to change.

One of her team members, Alyce has just finished studying and is looking for extra hours. This would be a great help but Olivia just isn't sure of when Alyce is available or what days she would be best utilised.

Table 1: Number of Team Members Rostered Per Day

MON

TUE

WED

THU

FRI

SAT

SUN

Number of Team Members

2

2

2

4

4

4

4

Table 2: Recurring Tasks to Be Completed

TASK

INSTRUCTIONS

NO. PEOPLE REQUIRED

DAY

Managers Meeting

Review weekly and monthly budgets, reforecast accordingly. Review roster and week specific actions.

2 - Store Manager, 2IC

Tuesday 8am-9am before store opens so no need for a cover for the shop floor

Delivery of new stock

All new stock unpacked, security tagged and re-merchandised on the shop floor.

2 - Team member to unpack delivery and a manager to re-merchandise accordingly

Wednesday and

Friday

Accessory markdowns

Follow direction for stock to be marked down and remerchandise accordingly

1

Tuesday AM

Apparel markdowns

Follow direction for stock to be marked down and remerchandise accordingly

1

Wednesday AM

Olivia decided to develop a trading profile, averaging out the sales made daily for the last two months (see below). She knows this will be a valuable tool to gain insight into how she can adapt her plan to ensure all the tasks get completed. Looking at her trading profile, the second biggest sales day for the week is Friday. However, Friday is the day that the store usually has a lot of tasks to complete for the weekend.

Table 3: Store Trading Profile

MON

TUE

WED

THU

FRI

SAT

SUN

Totals

Average Sales

$2000

$2100

$3500

$6100

$9100

$12500

$7200

$42500

% of Weekly Sales

4.71%

4.94%

8.24%

14.35%

21%

29.41%

16.94%

100%

The area manager, Tia, is pretty understanding with making changes to the plan, as long as Olivia can justify her decisions and put forward a strong business case.Olivia knows she probably needs to review how her human resources could be allocated across the days more effectively. Tia doesn't care so much about the labor budget at the moment, she wants to see a plan to figure out how all the tasks can be managed and then she'll see if she can allocate a budget accordingly.

TASK 1:

a) Construct a template of a status report in order to provide ongoing updates to Tia on the progress of Operational Plan. Complete the template with a current update of Olivia's plan. This will support Tia in her understanding of your Operational Plan's current performance. Include in the template how often the report should be distributed moving forward.