The Challenge:
A century-old distributor of commercial products experienced multi-year sales and customer declines due to shifts in customer buying habits and industry consolidation that spurred more competition. Meanwhile, its vast product mix, teams and national operations remained bloated. A new CEO was tasked with bringing the company back to profitability and initiated a major transformation initiative that included:
- Significant cost reduction across its inefficient network and fleet.
- Realignment of departments and roles.
- Changes in customer service and processes.
- Reevaluation of vendors, service providers and technology.
Alpha’s Solution:
- The transformation had sweeping implications for customers, suppliers and employees. This required a comprehensive communications and change management strategy to drive necessary change, including:
- Regular stakeholder outreach on upcoming plans with a regular flow of updates.
- Organizational change management content across functions via town halls, newsletters, intranet content, and postings at distribution facilities.
- Socialization and training of external-facing teams to support new ways of serving customers and policy changes.
- Continual and direct customer communications and follow-up.
Results:
- The communications strategy successfully supported sweeping transformational changes at the company by driving understanding and awareness of the “why and how” while motivating employees to implement change and helping external stakeholders embrace the new ways of doing business.
