TH NATION

Corporate transformation

 

We work with clients to align their organisations to changing market conditions, competitive pressures and their own evolving strategies. This includes creating more customer-centric organisations, increasing agility and nimbleness to anticipate and beat market movements, diversifying into different products or services, expanding into new territories, or managing costs.

 

Our focus is on how to improve the organisation in its widest sense, not only structure, but also how roles and accountabilities are split; how people work together at hand-off points; governance and decision-making; skills, competencies and behaviours; and the measurement and management of performance.

 

Example projects include:

• Redesigning the organisation structure of a global telecoms group’s in-country businesses, moving from a functional structure to one organised around customer segments, to improve customer-focus and rebalance resources across back-office and front-office

• Restructuring a media infrastructure company to support their strategic migration into new technologies and services, and sell or wind down their activities in older services

• Dismantling historical organisational silos in a multi-national transport group and building a collaborative, customer-centric business aligning the commercial, operational and back-office functions of the firm

• Corporate recovery restructuring of a well-established high street financial services organisation in response to falling market share and deteriorating financial performance as a result of new entrants. The project resulted in a re-balancing of resourcing and costs to focus on customer service as a competitive differentiator

 

Functional transformation

 

Similar to corporate transformation but, as the name suggests, focused on making improvements to particular functions, we work with divisional leaders and their teams to design and implement organisational solutions to address specific challenges.

 

Example projects include:

• HR transformation, harmonising processes, structures, capabilities and technology across 18 countries of a global communications group

• Finance transformation to generate efficiencies and service improvements in the Group Finance functions of a global bank

• Technology transformation, integrating technology development and technology management units of a leading technology firm, and aligning them to business units

• Corporate centre transformation to create efficient and effective central services, and improvements in services to customer functions

 

M&A integration

 

We support clients to integrate acquired and merged organisations to ensure they realise the synergies and targets driving the M&A whilst, crucially, sustaining the inherent value of the component organisations, something that is often diluted as the integration process unfolds.

 

Our integration process involves a relentless focus on the targets and the identified value-drivers of all organisations involved in the deal, establishing a rock-solid integration team consisting of all partners, and following an agreed, structured integration programme.

 

As well as the organisation changes required to deliver the synergies and targets, aligning the people and cultures of the partner organisations is critical and often not a quick-fix. We ensure that our clients have solid plans in place to address this issue, in a way that will mean something real and positive to employees.

 

Example projects include:

• Integration of an independent service provider into the UK arm of a global communications business, including design of the target integrated organisation, and managing the transition of employees from the acquired partner into the buyer organisation

• Creation of a Group Corporate Affairs function for a global education services provider, integrating corporate affairs services, activities and teams from the Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific

 

Organisational effectiveness reviews (OER)

 

Often, organisations know there are things that can be improved in the way they work, but they are not sure exactly what they are. Our fast-track diagnostic toolkit enables companies to continuously review and adjust organisational shape and size, in line with changing market conditions and strategy, or to fix problems with effectiveness or efficiency.

 

The start point for these exercises is always to agree with the organisation's leaders what good looks like in terms of organisational shape, size, outputs and measures. The current organisation is then measured against these criteria so that specific focused improvements can be identified and implemented.

 

We also train leaders, managers and HR teams in the OER methodology so that the toolkit can be used in-house as part of the business planning process.

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Change management

 

Of course, all organisational solutions need to be turned into reality to ensure the benefits are realised and that the improvements stick.

 

We believe that external advisors should be willing and able to implement their proposals, so we work with clients to plan and implement the organisational improvements created together. This involves the transition period, moving from the current to the future-state organisation, as well as medium to longer-term transformation activities to ensure the improvements are understood and embraced by the people working in the organisation.

 

Our approach to change management focuses on accelerating the delivery of business benefits and minimising the inevitable dips in performance while people focus on the changes, as well as their day jobs. We support clients with change planning, communication, training, leadership and management development, engagement activities, developing reinforcement mechanisms for the changes, managing risk, and actively measuring and managing the achievement of business benefits associated with the changes.