Aaron
Brothers
Aaron
Brothers is an artistic, interactive shopping destination
featuring custom framing, artwork and brand name art supplies.
Owned by Michaels Stores, Inc., Aaron Brothers operates
over 160 stores in 11 states. Aaron Brothers has sales
of almost $170 million and over 1,700 employees.
Training Needs
Aaron
Brothers' was moving their corporate headquarters from Commerce,
CA to Irving, TX. TEC was engaged to capture and document
business processes for the Planning Manager and Planner/Analyst
positions. This would help in the development of training
materials that would be needed to train new Planning Managers
and Planner/Analysts upon hiring in Irving.
Aaron
Brothers had no written procedures or processes for these
positions. TEC consultants conducted extensive interviews
with the Manager and Analyst to construct the processes
for 20 weekly management reports and all daily activities
for both positions.
Challenges
The
greatest challenges of this project were:
-
Lack
of current procedures and processes
-
Time
constraint imposed by the move to Irving
-
All
reports were built in Excel using highly complex macros
with no documentation
-
Tasks
were repetitive due to discrepancies in data processing
timing
TEC Services and Products Delivered
TEC
assigned two consultants (one retail expert with over 30
years retail experience and one with advanced Excel skills)
to interview the Planning Manager and Planner/Analyst. Access
to Michaels/Aaron Brothers network enabled consultants to
work off-site when possible to work through procedures to
wisely use the time available from SMEs.
TEC
documented all procedures, recommended time saving and labor
efficiencies, and provided Aaron Brothers with process and
procedure documents for use in training the Planning Manager
and Planner/Analyst positions, and other merchants.
Results
Aaron
Brothers hired two Planning Managers upon its relocation to
Irving. TEC's process documentation helped these new employees
get up to speed quickly.
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