01. It’s Your Move

Global Restructure

Over time, successful organisations of all types can sometimes lose sight of the very thing that gave them success in the first place. They become paralysed by process and lose the dynamic agility of their entrepreneurial beginnings.

The client was a large UK based supplier of consumer goods into customers on the high street and in the grocery and discount sectors.

In order to reposition the client to cope with the dual threats of direct competition from factories in Asia and the drive from retail customers for lower pricing, my team developed a plan to deliver a comprehensive organisational restructure and the complete re-drawing of existing business processes.

The target was to get as close to a direct sourcing model as physically possible, whilst still retaining the value-added attributes that made them unique. The idea was to isolate those skills that were essential to front facing client relationships, such as collaborative NPD, from the important, but more operational procedures which could, with the appropriate training, interface remotely. 

Through the dual approach of focused and specialist training coupled with a comprehensive process review, which removed any duplicated or redundant tasks, we were able to create a leaner, more efficient and profitable structure.

We set about mentoring the local sourcing teams and introducing them to a “fully accountable” customer facing mindset. 

The teams were already highly skilled, service-oriented individuals, but after an intense period of tutelage and guidance from experienced and skilled mentors, they were transformed into a self-sufficient division, not only capable of high calibre, effective communication with clients, but also of an end to end “ownership” of the entire critical path from pre-product concept to shelf and even post-sale.

The result was a “full scale repositioning of roles”, enabling a highly efficient, lower cost model which was recognized by clients as delivering competitive, tailored value at multiple touch points, and importantly, as a pro-active initiative to help them achieve their own financial and operational KPIs.