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Introduction

Welcome to Episode 36 of the Enterprise Excellence Podcast. I am so pleased to have on the show with me today Xanny Christophersen. Xanny is the Chief Operations Officer of Priestley's Gourmet Delights, one of the leading cake and dessert manufacturers of Asia Pacific.  Xanny has focused her career on excellence for customers, people and the planet. Let's get into the episode. Xanny, thank you for joining us today. 

Summary

Before COVID-19, business was excellent, and they were starting to hit some of the EE goals. Their key goals were to embed the EE journey into the organisation through regular huddles, lead and lag measures and to ensure economic viability for their employees. And then COVID-19 hit. Xanny remembers the announcement from Scott Morrison to shut pubs, clubs and restaurants and that we were all going into lockdown. She recalls the tears and the surreal feeling that her family business could lose everything. Overnight, Priestley's lost 90% of their market share. 

How did they pivot through this catastrophe?

Priestley's cut expenses and reduced their exposure to raw ingredients, with use-by dates. Their main focus was to ensure they had a business left for their employees to return to. They went through an Agile Sales journey, and for the first time, rearranged their regional sales teams into smaller, tight channels exploring untapped opportunities. Their experience in Enterprise Excellence prepared them well; they had to pivot fast. Problem-solving, troubleshooting, and carefully analysing untapped markets in the smaller teams opened up new opportunities in the market. Priestley's were back to 60% of sales by August 2020 and have since recovered completely, which we are thrilled to hear.

What were the resulting measures?

The resulting measures were winning independent retail contracts and working with their crucial QSR partners to improve their customer journeys. Xanny had never seen the team more engaged. They have kept a national virtual sales meeting, exploring their sales pipelines. They thought outside the square and gathered data from Uber, finding the cafes to deliver more value to the menu by offering a dessert item. Xanny hopes that we all didn't put too many COVID kilos!

Reaching out to Xanny

Email: [email protected]

LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/xannychristophersen/

Key Takeaways

1. Involve everyone in cultural and strategic planning
2. Establish a system for people at all levels to retain focus and execute strategic and cultural improvement.

Quotes

02:43 min Obviously, people are our future, and so is the environment. So, we wanted to make that we were leaving the environment in a better place than what we started with. It's really important for us that our business is going to be around for future generations and that the environment is left in a better position for future generations. 

14:32 min we've actually kept a national sales meeting on a Wednesday where they talk about their leads, their opportunities, and what's in their sales pipeline.

21:27 min for me, it's about progress, not perfection. There's a lot to learn. You are never going to get everything right the first time around. So its focus on the progress, not on nailing it to perfection. I think for me, Enterprise Excellence is a journey that will never stop. There's always something to learn; there's

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