SWL: Deep Dive Retail Productivity and Workforce Management Experts

The SWL Group Mission Statement

"SWL Group’s mission is to be the trusted productivity advisers to retail and B2C organisations, building long-term partnerships with service-focused businesses worldwide by delivering compelling and innovative productivity solutions, which continually deliver competitive edge and measurable benefits."

Thought Leaders and Trusted Advisers since 1990

Since 1990 SWL has been delighting retailers through helping them continuously improve their productivity, including major UK businesses such as Tesco, G4S, Barclays, BP, various Co-ops, First Direct, Wickes, Spar, Selfridges, Birmingham Midshires, Matalan and T-Mobile. Recognised as clear market leaders over several years, SWL was acquired in 2001 and has since reformed as a UK-based private company, bringing with it a combination of innovative new thinking, next generation workforce management solutions and productivity methodologies to help retailers further improve their competitive edge.

A Unique Fusion of Business Offerings

The SWL Group consists of an enviable and harmonious fusion of business types that provide a comprehensive, unique and value-added set of customer offerings. These include:

• Established retail productivity improvement services including:
• Work measurement
• Productivity reviews
• Recommendations for improvement with estimated financial benefits
• Exclusive sector-specific benchmarking, down to granular detail
• Store labour modelling and workload building
• Labour budgeting
• Process mapping & improvement
• Management structure reviews and recommendations
• Six sigma analysis to improve consistency of operations
• Current technology reviews and new technology feasibility studies
• Labour management business consultancy including systems selection advisory services
• Retail and operations knowledge leadership transferral
• Workforce management (WFM) implementation experts
• ‘Light’, ‘lower investment fee’ workforce management solutions that provide only the most essential functionality to enable rapid achievement of productivity opportunities, including:
• Staff Profiling - Accurately calculate the hours and shifts required to run each site for all ‘business as usual’ activities, based on unique labour standards, trading profiles and characteristics
• Labour Budgeting - Quickly devising demand-based equitable labour budgets for the entire enterprise, keeping labour spend under control delivering better staff-to-customer coverage
• Event Management - Link all ‘non business as usual’ store events and activities to corporate goals, track their progress, collate feedback and understand the financial consequences of non-compliance
• ‘Light’ Time and Attendance - T&A system which is faster and easier for stores to implement, learn, use and maintain. Cable-free hardware with innovative communications options

20+ Years in Retail Operations

Besides our enviable expertise in retail productivity solutions, many of the SWL team each boast over twenty years working in retail, meaning we know both sides of the retail operations fence and therefore can fully relate to what our customers are seeking to achieve.

From identifying the underlying business needs, and researching, selecting and procuring productivity solutions, through to operationally landing projects, as former operational managers and solutions providers, SWL understands the internal pressures and demands on your business functions and the potential issues and risks and how to mitigate them.

Furthermore, SWL’s experience and expertise means we are regularly approached by retailers for our knowledge leadership and new ideas that solve burning issues, for example we introduced the concept of linking staff scheduling with customer counting in the UK which has now been widely adopted as a means of responding to sudden changes in demand and increasing customer conversion.

‘Deep-dive’ Retail Productivity Specialism

SWL blend traditional core productivity skill sets of work study with modern day methodologies including retail six sigma to facilitate greater depth of analysis and opportunity realisation which, when combined, deliver greater benefits and a faster investment return.

Delivering ‘Added Value’ from Your Investment

Any business would be interested in working with a supplier that always has its eye on a ‘bigger than anticipated prize’ for the customer. SWL − through its retail productivity knowledge leadership − has often been able to reveal previously unknown yet sizeable opportunities for operational improvement.

Drawing on our prior individual experiences as retailers, process/productivity experts and solutions developers, we are able to take a holistic, experience-based focus on (a) people (b) processes and (c) systems, understanding cause and effect interrelationships between the three and by how much each area impacts on overall productivity and the bottom-line. And it is this value-added focus that helps to ensure our recommendations are not only financially attractive, but importantly are highly realistic and achievable, and sensitive to all stakeholders’ needs.

A Fast Return from the Premium Providers

At SWL we pride ourselves on the measurable and tangible results we yield for customers. After all, that is what brings customers back to us after we have solved a burning productivity challenge.

For example, with our productivity improvement services, we typically deliver full investment returns in 3-5 months, and we expect to find opportunities for improvement (and identify the actions required to achieve them) in every study we perform.