Page 37 - TA2022-Souvenir

Bronze Award

“Building An Agile Sales Workforce” Special Awards

Esquel Group Excellence in Change Management
Excellence in Digital Transformation
Excellence in Programme Design

About Esquel Group
Esquel is a knowledge-based innovation company that continuously pushes for positive change in the textile and apparel business, expanding into new
territory to evolve with the industry and its customers. It is headquartered in Hong Kong, based in China, focused on Asia and aims to serve the world.
Over 40 years of successful experience and accumulated knowledge in operating a vertically integrated supply chain, people-centric development, design
and merchandizing help Esquel promotes sustainable growth and provide meaningful insights and solutions to customers across industries.
Objectives
Under the pandemic and volatile business environment, Esquel has undergone disruptive business transformation, moving from shirt manufacturing
business to include also technology and venture, and home-grown shirts brands. It is more important than ever for sales who used to manage
manufacturing orders to transform and be agile, think ahead of the market, with a customer-centric and innovative mindset.

Design and Implementation
Esquel has been focused on driving the following 3 key areas, intrapreneurship, digitalization and standardization, through virtual, hybrid training,
executive sharing, cases study, Hackathon, cross-functional project taskforce, digital curriculum and e-learning to make the changes.
1. Intrapreneurship
The first Hackathon of Esquel was held in the Hong Kong headquarters as a starting point to encourage all employees to think out of the box and turn
data into insights.
2. Digitalization
Esquel designed a Digital Curriculum which offered structured learning courses under different categories and digital literacy levels, to equip colleagues
with solid digital skills.
A Video Production Task Force is formed in Hong Kong and the Mainland China for Esquel’s Line Review collections and new product launch. Customers
can now review the new products through YouTube videos. Virtual showroom has also been explored and set-up.
3. Standardization
On-site and hybrid mode of Design Thinking Workshops have been arranged for Esquel’s change agents to drive the new initiatives of transformation of
process, mindset and use of technology in Sales.
The sales teams are serving different brands with their own order processing flows, information requirements and standard, terminologies, and practices,
which created a huge barrier to digitalization. Combining the efforts of seven sales teams, the taskforce members worked to standardize and streamline
the process and information flow through integrating the sales database and standard information protocols.
To release the Hong Kong Sales team for more value-adding and customer-facing job, Esquel trained up the Product Development (PD) and Production
Planning and Control (PPC) teams in the Mainland China to take up the sales duties and directly handle customer inquiries.
Outcomes
As a whole, Esquel has addressed the business needs, internal and external business stakeholders’ needs and enhanced the competitive advantages in
digital age.
• Hackathon – the project consolidated multiple systems into one platform using machine learning, image search and supervised data for fabric
searching and better merchandising. This hugely reduced sales’ time for searching for fabric and saved costs in developing new fabric for customer
recommendations.
• Digital Curriculum – reduced resistance in learning technology.
• Video Production & Virtual Showroom – developed all-round sales making good use of digital marketing channels. Over 100 colleagues have been
trained in both Hong Kong and the Mainland China.
• Design Thinking Workshops – enabled mindset breakthrough in improving work efficiency.
• Standardization Taskforce – nurtured Change Agents for taking ownership for improvement.
• Virtual Sales Simulation Training Series – enabled knowledge transfer and made better manpower resourcing.

Comments from Adjudicators
An all-rounded and comprehensive programme that aimed to build agility in its sales work force through a digital transformation journey on three key
areas, including intrapreneurship, digitalization and standardization.
With a thorough analysis on its business needs and industry challenges, the programme objectives were clearly set to fit current market trends. Practical
interventions catering to Esquel’s business and operation needs were launched; and strategized with a good combination of Hackathon, learning
workshops (including Robotic Process Automation) Study Group which drove and lightened up motivation and intrapreneurship among employees.
Overall speaking, the programme generated positive outcomes for a textile and apparel business that focused on equipping its staff with digital
knowledge and mindsets through an on-going innovative journey.

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AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT 2022

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