Celebrating 10 years of ReThink Productivity

1st July 21

Time gone by in the blink of an eye

It felt like a brave step setting out to form our own company that specialises in productivity and efficiency. And 10 years on, it has been a privilege to have worked with so many wonderful clients, making a big difference for their customers and colleagues.

Customer facing business has been transformed over the past 10 years. The role of retail stores has switched as online shopping has grown exponentially. We’ve gone back to the future with delivery services that can drop off your grocery order an hour later (just like delivery boys used to a hundred years ago).
Working from home has shifted where and when customers drop in for lunch, coffee and everything else. Yet, how colleagues spend their time, store productivity, operating models and the effectiveness of store leadership roles still matter.

We’re proud of the changes we’ve made to how workstudy data can be collected and enriched with notes and photos, thanks to our ReTime workstudy app. The differences we’ve made deliver added value to clients’ data and transform workstudy data from an uninspiring Excel file to actionable insights that are used to set productivity agendas, optimise the benefits of process and equipment changes, and use a workstudy evidence base to drive action.
The work we do is only as good as our client’s ability and drive to put the insight to good use.

We’ve helped:

• Commuters get their hands on their coffees quicker by speeding up coffee making at train stations
• Phone shop customers to get more colleague time when they want it by freeing up store teams from non-essential tasks that take up their time and energy
• Customers get their hands on items that were important to them during lockdown as a health store moved to store fulfilment as orders rose
• Fast foodies by helping their brand focus on what makes a difference
• Call centres identify and eliminate the problems that slow down the colleague’s ability to resolve their customers’ queries
• New services and products reach customers efficiently by helping the brand adopt efficient operating models that support sales and service growth

We’ve saved:

• Colleagues’ legs from miles of walking by showing the importance of having everything you need to hand and improving layouts
• Trees by highlighting opportunities to save paper from printed reports and trackers, and reducing till receipt waste
• Customers from waiting in queues by suggesting small improvements to layouts and queues that add up to a big difference

And we’re thrilled at how we’ve brought individuals together. From the great people who have joined our ReThink team and do a fantastic job for our clients, to the clients who have shared their time and expertise to attend our live events, been guests on our podcast and create a community of like-minded productivity experts who are willing to help each other and share their learnings. Thank you to everyone who has helped!

So much happened in the first 10 years, so what’s next?

Like many of you, we want to make the most of the data we have. There are six million-plus data points in our data set and our exploring AI so we can bring more usable productivity insights to our clients. Whether that is benchmarking that helps you understand your sector context and the art of the possible, or innovative approaches so you can manipulate your data to explore different operational scenarios; we want to keep on recognising opportunities and creating insights so that organisations make better decisions and deliver a sustained, positive contribution to customers, colleagues, and society.