Coles CEO Leah Weckert restructures retail giant to improve grocery availability

A restructure at Coles pushed through by CEO Leah Weckert aims to address one of the biggest grievances among shoppers and improve stock levels and availability in the store.

Coles CEO Leah Weckert is putting a fresh focus on in-store availability of groceries after a $1.4bn investment in distribution and fulfilment centres. Picture: Rebecca Michael

Coles boss Leah Weckert has pushed through a restructure of the retailer’s supply chains and commercial teams that includes the creation of a new centralised “replenishment” division to ensure when shoppers walk through the doors there are not only enough groceries on the shelf but stock can also be quickly and efficiently replaced.

The new team will cover a range of restocking requirements including trying to better forecast customer demand to make sure the right product are on the shelves in the right quantities, so as to not leave shoppers disappointed.

As part of a wide-ranging restructure that touches the supermarket’s sprawling commercial, supply chain and operational pillars, Coles has also committed to hiring dozens of new executives to expand its ranks of category managers that will deal directly with suppliers at a time when there is huge political heat on the way supermarkets treat food and grocery suppliers.

Coles has also introduced more cross-collaboration between various teams that look after supply chains, replenishment and commercial operations as part of Ms Weckert’s wider strategy to create greater alignment, improved collaboration and help it better serve its customers, stores and sites.

Now more than one year in the role, Ms Weckert’s restructure comes as Coles also rounds off its $1.4bn investment in new state of the art automated distribution centres and fulfilment centres that now form key infrastructure to streamline and accelerate the supermarket’s offerings to customers.

The Coles CEO recognises the next stage of Coles’s evolution needs to see its in-store experience match the high expectations of shoppers – especially when it comes to product availability and ordering online. A sore point among most shoppers is walking into a store with a shopping list and not finding what they need on the shelf, and it’s this continued challenge for supermarkets that Ms Weckert has increasingly turned her mind to in order to develop a new strategy.

A new replenishment division at Coles will ensure stores have enough stock available to meet forecast demand. Picture: Alison Wynd

This has seen Coles establish a new division, a centralised replenishment team, that brings supply chain experts from across its business into one centralised team to be led by Daniel Ellul as general manager. This dedicated replenishment team will focus on delivering improved availability for Coles’ customers through partnership and collaboration with its supplier partners, clear accountability and end-to-end planning.

“We are really excited about this, and we realised the strategy just over a year ago … and what we’ve been doing as a team is really working up what are some positive changes that we could make within our commercial operations team so that we continue to deliver on that strategy, but also better support customers and suppliers,” Ms Weckert told The Australian.

“And that new replenishment team is a big part of that. So we’ve invested in the modernisation of the supply chain through the automated distribution centres and fulfilment centres and I’ve talked a lot about this at our results that product availability and improving that in our stores has been a big focus this last 12 months.

“So you put those two things together, and this is the right time for us to make some changes to ensure our supply chain and operational functions are really set up for success. So we’ve established this centralised replenishment team that’s going to bring together all of the team members that were doing supply chain tasks across various different teams across the business.”

She said this would help Coles have a proactive and focused approach on maintaining availability in its stores.

“And so that team is going to be working on forecasting demand, they’re going to be working on closer collaboration with our suppliers, and it’s really all in the effort of when a customer comes in with a shopping list, they can actually find everything on that list in our stores.”

Alongside the creation of the replenishment team, Coles has also announced internally that it would greatly expand its category teams – managers who deal with suppliers across specified grocery lines – by hiring up to 30 new category managers.

“And that will again enhance the partnerships we have with suppliers, but it also enables us to have more focus, more minds, more energy on how do we keep really stepping up the offer that we’ve got for customers.”

A third plank of Ms Weckert’s new strategy is what she terms “bringing in a different way of working” to form “teaming tables” where Coles brings together experts from across the business, such as commercial, supply chain operations and digital and guide them to work together and collaborate so Coles can “go faster and make more informed decisions”.

“We have taken a bit of inspiration from some of the global retailers on this. Previously, we’ve kind of operated these as separate business unit teams and now we have these teaming tables.”

She described all these changes and the restructure as “good for suppliers and good for customers”.

Originally published as Coles CEO Leah Weckert restructures retail giant to improve grocery availability