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In the second quarter of 2022, Empiraa will launch – a strategy software platform that helps teams effectively design and manage their strategies.

Ash Brown founded Empiraa after working as a senior manager in three businesses and realising that many teams lacked an effective platform to manage strategy.

Empiraa is a results-driven strategy management system designed to provide leadership with “what they need, when they need it,” said Brown. “The system assists to fight fires before they happen.” The platform focuses on the SME market – a segment which is underserved by traditional strategy software suites and one that struggles to pay the bills of high-end strategic advisors.

Nordstrom has tapped consulting firm AlixPartners to advise on a potential spinoff of Nordstrom Rack, the department store’s off-price retail brand, according to a Bloomberg report.

Nordstrom has been dissatisfied with Rack’s performance during the 2021 economic recovery. Rack’s third quarter sales totaled $1.19 billion – up 35% from the same period in 2020 but down 8% from 2019. Nordstrom’s main business, meanwhile, had Q3 2021 sales growth of 3% over Q3 2019.

CEO Erik Nordstrom said in a November earnings call that the company had hired consultants to help improve Rack’s performance and profitability. “We are not satisfied at all with our Rack business as clearly our recovery is lagging what we think it should be,” Nordstrom said.

Addressing the impact from Covid on youth health and issues around the growing demand for lithium are two of the hot topics for the year ahead according to Kearney’s annual predictions.

Global management consulting firm Kearney has made its annual predictions for the year ahead, and several of them could have a sizeable impact on businesses in Australia. There is a notable shift in the tenor of the predictions from just two years ago – which zoomed in on geopolitical discord and environmental crises – with the focus now more squarely on base tech resources and governmental action in the wake of the global pandemic.

Having shaved its list by a half last year, Kearney’s predictions (an annual exercise conducted by the consultancy’s think-tank the Global Business Policy Council) for the trends and events that will most shape the operating environment in 2022 boil down to five main points: ongoing ESG pressure on governments and companies; the boom in virtual healthcare, a tipping point in demand for lithium, and the scramble for semiconductors.