KOSKELA
A leading design and retail house in Australia wanted to grow rapidly. As Australia’s first homewares and furniture company to be a Certified B-Corp, Koskela is also continually seeking to optimise its social and environmental impact.
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The organisation faced 6 major challenge areas:
Technology: Technology and systems needed an overhaul, to improve inventory management, provide a contemporary customer experience and enhance team collaboration
Finance: The CEO wanted easier and more consistent reporting to support the finance and budgeting functions
Metrics: The CEO saw the need for better enablers for data-driven decision-making
Sales: All stakeholders needed better visibility of the sales pipeline and a fresh take on strategic planning for sales
People: While the team culture and relationships were positive and strong, Koskela’s scale meant the team lacked clarity of roles and goals, and otherwise excellent teamwork and collaboration were plagued by confusion, inefficiency, and frustration where roles crossed over Employees were seeking self-development and expanded responsibilities aligned to the company’s aspirations
Strategic planning: With daily operational issues crowding out time for strategic planning and growth initiatives, the company’s strategy was high level and lacking concerted follow up action and operationalisation of plans.
Kirsty worked with the client on a holistic approach to clarify the inhibitors to growth, to improve performance and increase innovation. Together, they came up with a set of interactive work streams to tackle each area and hold true to the CEO/founder’s vision of a low-bureaucracy, flat-structured, and highly effective enterprise driven by social purpose.
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The client now has a refined set of KPI measures for output, quality, and efficiency, that will be supported by a new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. A well-timed move to Microsoft Office and collaboration platforms enabled remote work during the 2020 pandemic. Tightened cost management and new processes for ongoing systems management ensure Koskela is well positioned for future expansion. The sales team now enjoys improved strategic sales planning, and added rigour in activity management, with focused strategies to secure large deals. Employees were involved in clarifying and redesigning roles and updated job descriptions, with Kirsty building internal capability in 1:1 performance coaching, and collaboration that is both positive and effective.
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Kirsty also led and managed operations to deliver critical diversification strategies over 12 months, upgrading the online store and tuning operations to cater to Koskela’s clients across the range of furniture, education, designer, and Indigenous Art Gallery streams of the business.
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As part of the program of work, Kirsty built the roles and strategic plans to enable the purpose-driven initiatives that have been Koskela’s hallmark and aspiration since its founding. These included the Indigenous Design Program, working with indigenous art centres across Australia to delivery unique designs for commercial products, and a carbon neutral commitment for 2020. Under Kirsty’s guidance, Koskela will secure GECA product certification, ISO 9001 (Quality) and 14001 (Environmental) accreditation, and renewal of Koskela’s prized B-Corp certification.
In hindsight, the program of work had been perfectly timed - primed for growth, the client’s online store accelerated performance through the 2020 pandemic period achieving close to 100% revenue growth. The technology refresh meant employees were able to work remotely with minimal interruption to pursuit of the growth agenda. More broadly, the team report feeling empowered and more resilient to change.
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The client is now positioned to deliver more tangibly on its social purpose, with ambitious goals identified and set, and the strategic plans and underpinning operations now in place to achieve them.
