[vc_row][vc_column][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text]Eastern National’s strategic plan continues through fiscal year 2020 with a focus on several key and continuing initiatives—chiefly the transition to a new Point-of-Sale (POS) system. Other strategic priorities include Friends Group philanthropy through Outer Banks Forever, improvements to EN’s Partner Donations Portal, and enhanced implementation of our America’s National ParksTM brand.
Partnerships
In November, Eastern National launched a.org to strengthen the story of our America’s National ParksTM -branded stores and create a closer tie-in with our eCommerce platform, which is now shop.americasnationalparks.org (formerly eParks.com). Throughout the upcoming year, we’ll continue to provide staff, partners, and customers with resources that help to reinforce our family of brands strategy and the story of our support to our public-lands partners.
People
The new fiscal year launched with the realignments of some regions and departments, increasing our capacity and strategic support for all locations. In addition to shifts affecting a few specific locations, Eastern National’s former New England Region has been split into two new regions: Metro Boston and Northeast. EN continues our commitment to a high-performing and highly accountable workforce by focusing on succession planning in 2020. Projects in support of this goal range from ensuring all job descriptions accurately reflect current roles and responsibilities, to conducting leadership skills assessments across HQ and field management, to creating individualized staff development plans.
Operations
Across the organization, this year’s main focus is to convert existing POS sites and some select manual stores to Erply, our next retail POS software provider. We have been working closely with the Erply team to determine the best approaches to system configuration, data conversion, and integration with our other systems. Details regarding pilot sites, training, and rollout will be shared as plans are finalized. All current POS locations can generally expect full Erply implementation by early May 2020.
Finances
The Grow Sales Evaluation, which concluded in September, yielded new tools and resources to measure our business results. These include new processes and workflows, improved role clarity, and the ability to make better data-driven decisions. Results will influence store operations through 2020 and beyond as we continue to learn and refine our processes and workflows. Outer Banks Forever just completed a successful first-ever Giving Tuesday and continues its outreach to current and potential new donors throughout the holiday season.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][/vc_column][/vc_row]