Bold Group
The stores were slow to open because of the order, not the work.
A convenience-store operator, opening new stores across Thailand as a continuous programme. Each store took several months to open, and delays in the opening cycle set the pace at which the network could expand.
The situation
A store earns nothing until the day it trades. At rollout scale, every week of the opening cycle is capital already committed and not yet recovered.
Design approvals and construction each looked efficient, measured on their own. The delay was in the order they ran in. The sequence had been inherited rather than designed, and steps waited on each other that did not have to.
The turn
Not every step had to wait.
Each stage has to finish before the next one can start.
Which of these steps really have to wait for the one before, and what becomes possible if the rest stop waiting?
The decision: rethink the sequence under the client’s stated cost and quality conditions, rather than make each stage faster inside the order it had always run in.
Before
- Development decision
- Design
- Approvals
- Construction
- Fit-out
- Store trades
Managed as separate stages in an inherited sequence: each waits for the one before.
After
- Development decision
- Steps with a real dependencystill wait for the one before
- Steps without oneno longer wait
- Store trades
Cost and quality conditions held fixed. The case does not publish which steps moved.
Schematic, not to scale.
How we worked it
How the sequence was tested.
- 01
Make the whole cycle visible
Map the path from development decision to opening day, across every function holding a step, a dependency or an approval, and find where the time actually builds up.
- 02
Test every dependency
Take each step in turn and ask whether it really depends on the one before it, or whether the order is simply the one the organization inherited and stopped questioning.
- 03
Co-design the revised process
Rebuild sequencing and coordination with the client team, holding the stated cost and quality conditions fixed rather than trading them for speed.
Facilitated the end-to-end examination and co-designed the revised process with the client team.
Supplied the operating knowledge, judged what was feasible, measured the result, and kept authority over implementation.
What came of it
With the redesigned process in use, the client measured the time from development decision to the store trading at about 67% shorter, while holding the stated cost and quality conditions.
The 67% was measured by the client in its own operation; we did not measure it ourselves. It is not a promise that the same figure applies elsewhere.
How we label evidenceIs this your situation?
Signs
- The delay crosses functions, so no single team can remove it however well it performs.
- Each stage looks efficient on its own, yet the whole still takes too long.
What it needs from you
- An executive sponsor who can bring together the people who own each step, including those who only hold a decision.
- Cost and quality conditions stated up front, so speed cannot quietly be bought by lowering either.
Start here
Bring the result you need, and the thing you have been told cannot change.
One hour with a founder. You leave with a first view of where the answer may sit, and which engagement, if any, fits.
Teerasak WongpiyaCo-Founder and Managing Director
1 hour, in Thai or English, online or at your office.