Presented at Elevate '24

Meet Country Road Group

Country Road Group is a leading Australian fashion retailer, with a rich history spanning over 50 years. Part of Woolworths Holdings Limited and renowned for its iconic brands, including Country Road, Mimco, Trenery, Witchery, and Politix, Country Road Group consistently delivers high-quality, stylish apparel and accessories to a diverse customer base. With a focus on timeless design and exceptional craftsmanship, Country Road Group has established itself as a household name in the Australian fashion industry. The group's commitment to sustainability and ethical practices further enhances its reputation as a responsible and forward-thinking company.

The challenge

Like many retailers, Country Road Group faced a familiar challenge: project management chaos. For the real estate team, store planning relied on a cumbersome combination of spreadsheets and endless meetings. ‍

"It was incredibly time-consuming," said Swithin Oliver, Store Planning Manager at Country Road Group. "There was a constant back-and-forth between designers and planners, with duplicate work and endless email sifting just to understand where each project stood."

This inefficiency was particularly problematic considering the sheer volume and variety of store planning tasks. The real estate team manages over 15 different work types, ranging from new store openings to refurbishments and relocations. This includes a major focus on re-establishing brand concessions within department stores, such as Myer.

"Last year, all our brands re-entered Myer," Oliver explains. "This influx of concession projects created a complex workflow challenge. Just one brand like Country Road has multiple departments – home, kids, women's, and men's, which translates to four separate projects within a single Myer store. Multiply that by all our brands, and you're looking at up to nine projects per location." Oliver and the real estate team of designers, documenters, and project managers needed to overcome the silos of spreadsheets, an error-prone process, and the friction caused by duplicate work and wasted time.

The solution

Optimizing the project management process

Country Road Group has transformed its store planning process using monday work management. The aim was to increase visibility for the ‘relay race’ style collaboration required between the multiple different teams. What became evident, however, is just how much faster the real estate race could be run on monday.com.As Oliver explains, “monday.com has enabled us to work on 150 projects with 25% more efficiency, based on the way we have streamlined our project in the boards that we’ve created.”

Clarity through consolidation

A key benefit for the team was the ability to create a consolidated view of related projects, providing clarity for managers on project status and key timelines."Instead of managing nine separate boards, we created one board that represents all nine projects for a specific Myer location,” says Oliver. “This overarching board becomes the central hub, and the individual projects are seamlessly facilitated within it."

This approach proved incredibly efficient. Across its extensive footprint, Country Road Group has built over 150 concession spaces. Using monday.com, they were able to visually represent these projects from a project management perspective in under 50 boards. Broader store planning has been similarly transformed. A main pipeline board tracks projects by brand, providing a bird's-eye view of project status and critical dates for communication with stakeholders. This board uses automations to generate timelines, allocate resources, and adjust them dynamically based on project progress.

‍"With monday.com we have a central platform and one-stop shop for our projects," Oliver shares. "It allows us to stay focused and simplifies our workflow.”

Connecting strategy to execution

Country Road Group uses built-in reporting and interactive views to gain real-time insights into resourcing and workload across each fashion brand. Oliver describes these views as “magic for my team meetings.” Now, instead of spending time on admin and data collection, the team is more aligned with strategic goals and empowered to keep pushing projects forward. This visibility and transparency have also freed up time for optimization.

As Oliver explains, “After a project is complete, we can revisit the board and conduct a reflection exercise, analyzing successes and identifying areas for improvement. This level of project knowledge capture was simply impossible before."

‍While Oliver estimates a significant 25% improvement in project management efficiency thanks to the implementation of monday.com, the benefits go beyond numbers. Country Road Group has fostered a collaborative, data-driven environment, empowering its teams to streamline store planning and deliver exceptional customer experiences across its iconic brands.“monday work management has been the fabric that weaves my team’s success together,” says Oliver. “It hasn’t just elevated our performance; it’s also solidified our team culture, helping forge processes that reinforce our values.”