Rethinking How Retailers Manage Materials

The Situation: 50,000 materials and no easy way to find them

A global retail leader had a materials problem that went deeper than anyone initially admitted.

With more than 50,000 materials in its library and teams across supply chain, technology, and product creation working in separate functional lanes, finding existing materials was nearly impossible. So, teams defaulted to creating new ones. The results showed: quality became inconsistent and cost savings never materialized. With material strategy sitting at the intersection of cost, sustainability, and supply chain resilience, the stakes were too high to keep patching around the edges.

The company had brought North Highland in to get their new cost savings program back on track. But as our team dug in, what started as a program management engagement quickly revealed something more fundamental: this was a strategy problem, not a process problem. The initiative at the center of the work wasn't just a program to manage, it was a new way of working that needed to be built into how teams operated permanently.

Client Challenge: Everyone solving a different problem 

It became clear that what this team was missing was a shared starting point. Teams across supply chain, technology, and product creation were working to solve materials problems, but none of them were solving the same one.

• Business and technology teams were operating from different maps. Technology solutions were being designed against existing processes that weren’t working, which meant the wrong things were being automated, and no one had a single source of truth to course-correct against.

• Cross-functional roadmaps existed in silos, with each function solving for its own version of the problem. That meant initiatives regularly collided mid-flight; one team's material consolidation effort would conflict with another's product development timeline, and there was no mechanism to reconcile priorities before resources were already committed.
• A seasonal structure existed, but the material palette decisions and deadlines that needed to live along it didn't. Choices about which materials to prioritize for a season were revisited repeatedly, eroding confidence in the process and slowing everything down.

Solution: Decisions first, tools second

North Highland's team started by asking a question most programs skip: what decisions actually need to be made, and who needs to make them?

Rather than jumping to tools or process maps, the team worked with cross-functional leaders to define four core capabilities that would deliver value regardless of org structure or technology. From there, they mapped every key decision within each capability so business and technology teams finally had a shared language and a common starting point.

With the "what" defined, the technology team took it from there. Using the key decision map as their foundation, they landed on the most effective solution design and, within a month, had built an AI-enabled proof of concept. The tool could analyze a library of tens of thousands of materials, surface consolidation and selection recommendations, and automatically model the cost, sourcing strategy, and lead-time implications of each scenario. Analysis that used to take months could now be done in weeks.

Designs weren't handed off and built in isolation; they were iterated on together, with business teams testing and refining as the operating model evolved alongside the technology. grounded in real business logic. Designs weren't handed off and built in isolation, they were iterated on together, with business teams testing and refining as the operating model evolved alongside the technology.

Within a month, the approach enabled the development of an AI-enabled proof of concept that could analyze a library of tens of thousands of materials, surface consolidation recommendations, and automatically model cost, sourcing strategy, and lead time implications across scenarios. 

That's the talent and technology equation working the way it should: people-centered design informing what gets built, and the right technology amplifying what the right people can do.

The final phase focused on making it stick. Every key decision was sequenced across the seasonal calendar, which let us define the critical meetings and handoffs plus their owners, inputs, and outputs. Change management wasn't a separate workstream—it was embedded directly into the operating model, so teams could shift into a palette-first mindset without depending on the program or any single tool to keep them there.

Results: More value, faster timelines

A unified operating model spanning global materials and supply chain replaced the siloed functional roadmaps teams had been working from. And because the multi-seasonal calendar and decision ownership were built into how teams work, the gains didn't walk out the door when the engagement ended.

Teams now own and continuously improve the system. That's the measure that matters most: not what we built for the client, but what the client can build from here.

Ready to see what that looks like for your business? Let’s talk.