SOL­ID. DE­LIV­ERY. Glob­al. Fo­cused. 

Agile working. That´s a term that has had resonance just lately across Dufry. But what does it really mean? Without wishing to make this story into one of those interesting but somewhat detailed articles about management, it is relevant for us all to understand the switch we are making in the way Dufry strives to work.

Ag­ile Pro­ject Man­age­ment (APM) is a method­ol­o­gy that was first used to dri­ve com­plex IT de­vel­op­ment projects and is an it­er­a­tive ap­proach to plan­ning and guid­ing project process­es. With the APM method­ol­o­gy, projects are bro­ken down into small­er cy­cles or phas­es (called it­er­a­tions) that are com­plet­ed in work ses­sions (also known as sprints). Each sec­tion or it­er­a­tion is re­viewed and chal­lenged by the project team, which should in­clude rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the pro­jec­t’s var­i­ous stake­hold­ers. In­sights gained in these it­er­a­tion re­views are used to de­ter­mine what the next step should be in the project.

This work­ing method­ol­o­gy per­mits teams to re­lease seg­ments as they are com­plet­ed and al­lows teams to demon­strate that these seg­ments are suc­cess­ful and, if not, to fix flaws quick­ly. A new way of work­ing with high­er col­lab­o­ra­tion across dif­fer­ent func­tions and ge­o­gra­phies.

Down to Earth: Excellence Program and the Commercial Platforms
Cur­rent­ly, there are two key cor­po­rate projects run­ning that have em­braced this way of work­ing. What they both have in com­mon is the par­tic­ipa­tion of many dif­fer­ent teams from var­i­ous coun­tries, and the need to de­liv­er the re­sults quick­ly.

1. Retail Store Excellence
De­liv­er­ing more with what we have. This very sim­plis­tic de­f­i­n­i­tion of a way of de­liv­er­ing or­gan­ic growth is the “rai­son d’être” of this team. With the sup­port of an ex­ter­nal con­sul­tan­cy, a team has been an­a­lyz­ing what we can do bet­ter at store lev­el to in­crease the rev­enue gen­er­at­ed.

Based on sur­veys con­duct­ed in 45 top Dufry lo­ca­tions (ac­count­ing for 60% of our sales), and with over 20,000 face-to-face in­ter­views, we have found there is ma­jor po­ten­tial for growth. This will come from high­er in­ter­ac­tion with cus­tomers – which in turn dri­ves a high­er av­er­age cus­tomer spend.

In or­der to achieve this, the team fo­cused around three ar­eas:

• Teams: set­ting the right lev­el of staffing, train­ing and mo­ti­vat­ing them

• In-store com­mu­ni­ca­tion – im­prov­ing the ex­ist­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion to dri­ve in-store ex­cite­ment and in­creas­ing the sense-of-place el­e­ment to en­hance the val­ue propo­si­tion and dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion

• De­ploy­ing the sec­ond phase of New Gen­er­a­tion Stores, mak­ing the dig­i­tal as­pect of re­tail more present (staff dig­i­tal­iza­tion, use of an­a­lyt­ics, omni-chan­nel com­mu­ni­ca­tion, etc.)

The co­or­di­na­tion of the ac­tiv­i­ty of these three ar­eas does not re­al­ly dif­fer from oth­er projects. What re­al­ly makes the dif­fer­ence how­ev­er, is the way this comes to life. Con­sid­er­ing Dufry has more than 2,300 shops, de­liv­er­ing an in­di­vid­ual plan for each of them, and en­sur­ing it is the right one, would be a ti­tan­ic – if not un­re­al­is­tic – project.

With the APM method­ol­o­gy, the chal­lenge is a small­er one, as it is around in­di­vid­ual stores. Teams are put to­geth­er to work – around a frame­work – to de­liv­er a cus­tomized plan for a giv­en air­port. What is im­ple­ment­ed in Al­i­cante – a tourism des­ti­na­tion in the Span­ish Mediter­ranean sea­side – might not fit 100% in Stock­holm. How­ev­er, in­di­vid­ual ini­tia­tives from the Swedish air­port might work in Al­i­cante. So it is good that we can ex­per­i­ment and test and, even­tu­al­ly, trans­fer some el­e­ments to oth­er lo­ca­tions.

2. Integrated Commercial Platforms
Our busi­ness needs to be able to re­spond more quick­ly to mar­ket de­mands on a glob­al ba­sis. To make this hap­pen, sev­er­al teams have been briefed and put to work at the same time. Spread across sev­er­al lo­ca­tions – Amer­i­c­as, APAC, EMEA and UK – the new com­mer­cial plat­forms serve dif­fer­ent coun­tries in sev­er­al di­vi­sions and move the de­ci­sion-mak­ing pow­er from the com­mer­cial, sup­ply chain and lo­gis­tics stand­points to the plat­forms, which then work in clos­er col­lab­o­ra­tion with both the coun­try and di­vi­sion struc­tures (for more de­tail on the com­mer­cial plat­forms, please read the in­ter­view with Nigel Keal in this is­sue of Dufry World).

This new struc­ture in Dufry has learned to work as one, with teams with dif­fer­ent back­grounds and skills but with one sin­gle fo­cus: to dri­ve growth and prof­itabil­i­ty – a sim­ple mis­sion state­ment that is only pos­si­ble through quick de­ci­sion-mak­ing process­es and fast ex­e­cu­tion.

De­ci­sions are made around the prod­uct as­sort­ment, pro­mo­tions, nov­el­ties, pric­ing and sup­ply chain fol­low­ing the above-de­scribed APM method­ol­o­gy. The re­sult of this way of work­ing is the sen­si­ble re­duc­tion in de­ci­sion-mak­ing process­es and quick­er-to-mar­ket de­ci­sions that give Dufry more op­por­tu­ni­ties to test ini­tia­tives and, ul­ti­mate­ly, hit the nail on the head more of­ten.

Connected with the future of Dufry
These two projects that we have high­light­ed con­tribute to Dufry’s plan to evolve its busi­ness mod­el and re­spond to the com­pa­ny’s am­bi­tion of be­ing a One Glob­al, more cus­tomer-cen­tric com­pa­ny. As key parts of the Next Gen­er­a­tion Dufry Re­tail Mod­el, these two ini­tia­tives are ex­pect­ed to dri­ve sus­tain­able and prof­itable growth for our com­pa­ny by per­mit­ting a quick­er adap­ta­tion to the chang­ing en­vi­ron­ments in which we op­er­ate. They con­tin­ue the strate­gic path ini­ti­at­ed a few years ago and build on the de­vel­op­ment of a unique and glob­al Busi­ness Op­er­at­ing Mod­el (BOM), the con­sol­i­da­tion of IOS plat­forms at both lo­gis­tic and com­mer­cial lev­els, the de­ploy­ment of the E-Mo­tion strat­e­gy and, fi­nal­ly, the de­vel­op­ment of al­ter­na­tive chan­nels, like our ex­pan­sion into the cruise line busi­ness.

Aligned with our brand values
Glob­al. De­liv­ery. Fo­cused. Sol­id. These are Dufry’s brand val­ues, but also the main char­ac­ter­is­tics of this new way of work­ing that is gain­ing ground in Dufry. Ag­ile work­ing is en­abling us to un­der­take projects on a glob­al scale, fo­cus­ing on re­solv­ing key is­sues and de­liv­er­ing bold re­sults in a sol­id and con­sis­tent way. It also al­lows us to adapt very quick­ly to the chang­ing needs of our in­dus­try, to con­sumer’s buy­ing habits and to the rapid change of pace in to­day’s econ­o­my.

By Jorge Muñiz