Standing Up a Product COE to Reduce Marketing Waste

A marketing team at a sportswear retailer was experiencing product loss, launch leaks, surplus spending, space shortages, and waste when managing pre-launch products for photoshoots, internal product review meetings, and events.

The opportunity

We saw an opportunity to optimize processes, storage, security, scalability, and sustainability practices with a defined marketing product management center of excellence (COE).

How we helped

Aiming to uncover meaningful ways to improve marketing product management and rally a team around solutions, we:

• Interviewed individuals playing the role of product manager to understand their responsibilities and pain points

• Defined a COE model with job descriptions and leveling to centralize and up level the role of product management in operations

• Toured current product storage locations to understand space constraints, security practices, and access controls

• Toured best-in-class product management solutions such as ecommerce warehouses, retail stores, and .com photo labs to define the process, space, and technology requirements for an onsite marketing product library

• Facilitated workshops to identify the top challenges product operations talent faced when managing product

• Mapped current and future state processes from product request to product fulfillment and liquidation

• Defined solutions to reduce overspend on product, product loss, or waste with tools that would allow for greater alignment, visibility, and organization of a product library

• Identified sustainable solutions to liquidate product such as employee sample sales, recycling into shopping bags, and shredding for alternative uses such as rubber running tracks

• Designed a recommendation report and booklet to build a business case for a product management COE across executive leaders

How we made a statement

Bringing forth our services in strategy, operations, and change management, we identified a significant amount of cost and space savings that could self fund a COE that in turn recognized and elevated the roles of the operations people managing the marketing product management processes. It was a win for leaders and teams.