This company is a global and Australia leader in their industry, with operations across every continent. The Australia/NZ business identified a need for external and objective support for select leaders - to further expand partnerships with key clients and enable growth in critical/major sectors and accounts.
Our role has been to provide senior and experienced executives in mentoring roles and has included advice on: executive relationship management; large deal positioning and pitches; business analysis and identification of areas for potential growth; coaching for senior team members in large/complex deals; branding strategies; obtaining required investments and global support for key initiatives and deals; running group strategy and planning sessions.
Additionally we have provided regular 1:1 mentoring for some of the most senior leaders in those sectors.
The outcomes are ongoing, but, for the selected parts of the business, have included: a significant uplift in pipeline of opportunities, more targeted branding and marketing, additional investment and support, and increase in executive relationship penetration.
The acquiring organisation had strong transaction support for this $800m+ deal, plus committed growth and revenue synergy targets. However, the leadership wanted some independent advice for their management team, on the integration challenges and organisational barriers that would be faced post close—to ensure they could realise those synergies.
Regularly reporting to the Board and working alongside the senior team, our guidance helped the team establish an outcome driven plan, stitching together the functional, process, technology and people requirements for integration. The programme was built on a series of delivery waves owned by the ongoing executives and their teams. This enabled them to operate through a successful Day One without interruption, go on to fulfil the promise for the combined business, and meet the commitments of the financial case.
The outcomes for the successful business included: a one team approach, successful migration to single processes and systems, full retention of existing clients, and over achievement of the $75m year on year cost synergy case.
The existing regional and country-based model had enabled a history of success and a position for this company, as one of the largest alco-bev companies in the world, serving over 80 markets. However, this model presented difficulties in managing cost, prioritizing profitable international expansion and driving innovation. Led by the CEO under the guidance of the Board, the leadership team developed a new operating model to enable focus on meeting individual market demands and investing for growth most appropriately.
By assessing key market dynamics, they organised around meeting their clustered needs— based on life stage and development, rather than on arbitrary country or regional boundaries. In addition, investment and focus flowed to areas for innovation and growth, without jeopardizing the ongoing performance and operations of more mature and stable business areas.
The result was an increase in net sales of 8% supported by an increased marketing spend of 10%, while increasing the operating profit by 11%. Importantly, the business saw an increase to 40% of total business in fast growing markets.
After a multi-billion-dollar business unit sale was agreed by the board, and the sale advisors had largely left the building, the business turned its attention to executing the transaction. In addition, the management team needed to remain in control of its ongoing operations, which were under the spotlight of both the regulatory regime and the media. This required a large team to identify the operating model components requiring separation and an ability to understand the critical dependencies and priorities for all supporting elements—such as finance, technology and data migration.
Under the scrutiny of the ACCC, APRA, FIRB and the Trustees, the execution plan needed to be carefully constructed, managed and delivered by the business and a number of its critical partners. Keeping the Board abreast of the plans and advising the senior leadership while providing support for the teams on the ground was critical to success. The programme needed to constantly flex with external developments but was guided to a successful completion through a series of challenges and complexities over many months.
Deal closure was achieved through the creation of the separate 1000+ person business serving over 1.5m clients.
This conglomerate was a long-established company which the CEO believed would become less competitive due to “old ways of thinking”. He made digital innovation one of his key priorities across the group, to stimulate grassroots thinking, and find practical innovations which would deliver business benefit. He and his Executive Directors also wanted it to be led from within and reflect their unique culture. We helped him choose a team internally, supplemented it with our external experience, and then advised them on the structure, setup and implementation model for their business culture.
The programme used: “Ideation Sprints”—to solve management-defined business problems with bottom-up innovative ideas; an “Innovation exchange”—a technology platform, to enable innovative thinking and publicise achievements; an “Innovation Fund”—to fund idea development and validate proof of concept ideas; an “Innovation Lab”— to conduct rapid prototyping; and “co-creation” teams—to develop and implement the best ideas around the region.
The seven business units now have ongoing business model innovation as a primary plank in their respective business plans and, in the first year, they recorded more than 30 new ideas which positively impacted their business performance.
The leadership of one of the world’s largest banks had committed significant outcomes to the market and needed to establish a global transformation programme for its retail bank and wealth management busines. The CEO and Board were concerned that the accountable management wouldn’t have the experience required for the complexity and level of change. The main objectives were to: improve and simplify customer experience through digitisation; increase its already significant Asia focus; and transform operations to reduce the cost base.
Working closely with the Asia and Hong Kong CEOs and their leadership teams across a 3-year programme, we initially advised them on set-up and the best approach to achieve their committed business objectives and outcomes. We helped them design and bundle workstreams which were each focused on achieving specific business outcomes, measured monthly by agreed KPIs, and reported to the respective CEOs and Board. It was under-pinned by a rolling digital innovation initiative, a targeted change and implementation plan, and brought together in quarterly business and market releases—of business, digital and technology capability.
To achieve this, we met regularly and separately with the CEO and directors; programme leadership and steering group; and the executive team—to raise areas of concern, opportunity or any need to adjust. Areas of focus included identifying dependencies, team capabilities, programme culture, external impacts, milestone and benefits confidence.
The major outcomes were re-establishment as the #1 in-market bank through digital customer engagement; >$120m USD pa cost saves; reduction of operational cost base to level of 4 years prior; and digital capability transfer to the ongoing bank management.
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