RS Group plc (formerly known as Electrocomponents plc) is a leading global omni-channel industrial product and service solutions provider to customers who are involved in designing, building and maintaining industrial equipment and operations, safely and sustainably. They stock more than 700,000 industrial and electronic products, sourced from over 2,500 leading suppliers, and provide a wide range of product and service solutions to over 1.2 million customers. With operations in 32 countries, RS Group trade through multiple channels and ship over 60,000 parcels a day.
RS Group offer leading skills and capabilities across digital and supply chain to make customers’ lives easier, as well as provide unparalleled insight and make key decisions led by data. The five-year strategy was designed to differentiate the offer more clearly while building a lean, scalable business model capable of delivering sustainable growth and higher returns. As part of this, RS Group launched an initiative to unlock the potential of data and insight as a business enabler to drive business transformation.
After a rigorous procurement process, RS Group selected EY as the best partner to ensure that the data-driven initiative met its brief. Unlike traditional data-led strategies which are technology and data centric, EY applied a business value lens looking at ‘insights from data rather than the data itself’ as a transformational theme, enabled by technology.
EY’s value-mapping approach applied a future-back approach starting from the business objectives and outcomes of each function – including supply chain, marketing, sales, product management and so on – in line with future ambitions. EY identified a total of 30 value cases across all functions and markets that could potentially drive business value across multiple dimensions. EY partnered with the initiative team to gain senior execution.
Following the sponsorship from all senior stakeholders, EY further partnered with the RS Data Driven Initiative team to design and execute a connected data and analytics organisation operating model, and brought the value of analytics and new structure to life through a proof-of-value solution. This was executed in strong partnership with the RS Group Data and Analytics team, key business stakeholders and the initiative team to demonstrate how insights could help in making valuable decisions in critical functions like product management.
Crucially, the insight-driven decision-making approach is now taking root across the organisation – with the initiative being renamed as ‘Insight-Driven Initiative’.