Covering technical, quality management and responsible sourcing, Western Consulting work with companies to strengthen their plans and drive their retailer relationships.
Whether new to private label or an established business driving forward your customer partnerships, we bring an independent view based on 20 years retailer experience.
Also available to support with quality and food safety culture, quality systems improvement and sourcing strategy development (incorporating technical and responsible sourcing requirements).
Retailer Relationships
You may have a strong technical team and results to be proud of, but are you maximising this with your customers?
There are well recognised benefits of longer term partnerships driven by the retailer's confidence and trust in a supplier's capability. Earned recognition is becoming a reality with the strongest partnerships seeing reduced duplication and associated costs.
With 20 years retail experience Lesley can bring an independent and confidential retailer's perspective to your plans to strengthen your customer relationships.
Western Consulting offers a review of your current plans and how you are communicating them with your customers and can work with you to strengthen your plans or to build a stronger communication strategy.
Quality and Food Safety Culture
The focus has moved beyond compliance and there is a growing recognition of the need to ensure a strong food safety and quality culture runs throughout an organisation.
We can support with assessment of the current culture through to the development and implementation of action plans to continue driving improvement.
With a wide experience of driving quality at a senior level Lesley can also support with quality culture coaching or training.
Root Cause Analysis and Systems Improvement
In cases where things have gone wrong, an independent view of the issue can bring much needed objectivity to the situation. Or maybe it is just time for you to step back and review how you are doing things and where there is scope for improvement.
Having experienced many different issues and seen good and not so good plans to resolve and learn from the problem, Lesley can support with both the root cause analysis and the development of corrective and preventive action plans. It is a critical time to ensure plans are in place to maintain trust with the customer and consumer and rebuild relationships where necessary. Advice can be offered on your crisis management plans and customer communication.
Policy, Guidelines and Standards Development and Report Writing
Available to support the development of new policies or standards and any guidelines required for implementation. Also offer report writing across technical, quality and sustainability topics. We can support manufacturers, third parties or retailers looking for extra resource to help establish systems, investigate new topics or produce reports to support a business proposal.
Sourcing Strategy
There is a growing importance on how products are sourced and stronger calls for transparency of supply chains from all quarters which is only set to continue.
The Modern Slavery Act has brought legal status to improving ethical standards and retailers and brands are adding a growing number of challenging commitments to their requests of the supply base.
Western Consulting can review your plans and highlight further areas requiring focus, we bring a pragmatic approach to what is achievable and can support the prioritisation of actions to ensure they will drive the confidence of retailers and other stakeholders.
Robust sourcing strategies are critical to ensuring transparency and visibility of potential risks. Whether the risk is from an ethical perspective, environmental or authenticity - all have potentially catastrophic impacts on brand reputation. We can support with development of sourcing plans incorporating responsible sourcing requirements as well as technical.
Where required support with upstream suppliers also available.
New to Private Label? New to Retail?
It can be daunting supplying a new market for the first time. Whether it is your first time supplying large retailers or your first foray into own label, we can help navigate the requirements and ensure you have the systems in place that satisfy what the retailer is looking for. Small or large it is important to ensure the plans are suited to your resource levels. Through understanding requirements and potential costs prior to pitching for business you can ensure any agreement is sustainable for both businesses.
Where new processes are needed we can work with you to develop a phased implementation plan and support as required in delivering it.
Project Management support for implementation of recommendations available
Coaching, Mentoring and Training available