Context

Our client, one of the largest international automotive and mobility services players in the region representing 25 brands across 12 countries, had identified opportunities and established an ambition for significant value growth. But the organization, which had grown through acquisition and partnership, had remained siloed, compromising collaboration, synergy, efficiency, and agility. As a result, it had repeatedly failed to translate the growth ambition into executable plans and delivery.

Mandate and Approach

Working alongside the President and his leadership team, April architected the re-design of the whole organisation.

• Applying an integrated business design approach – ensuring alignment and mutual reinforcement between interconnected elements

  

• Starting with the consequences of purpose and strategy – to tease out and test design potential principles, using practical scenarios.

• Distinguishing and designing for common ‘success models’ across brands - (i.e. different forms/types of business with distinct conditions for success, business model requirements, and core processes – e.g. new car sales, used car sales, and quick service require distinct success models, but are common across brands). Designing for each success model (with common processes, digital enablement, structure, capabilities and governance where possible, different customer touch points where necessary) to enable exploitation of synergies, scale efficiently, and accelerate post-acquisition integration.

• Creating a common design product catalogue and building internal design capability -structuring the detailed work required into a modular product catalogue, with supporting templates and tools for each product at each step. With internal HR, Finance, and BPM leads ·      involved in progressing parallel success model design, the use of a common modular approach helped to:

  •      Build internal design knowhow rapidly, through common conceptual language, templates, and tools, (creating a ‘playbook’ for interconnected business design).

  •      Enable easier sharing of knowledge and learning between teams.

  •      Simplify reporting, enabling easier understanding of progress and delivery.

• Managing step-by-step rachet agreement with milestone ‘showcase’ events - creating progressive alignment, ‘ratcheting’ cumulative agreement from strategic intent, through design principles, and operating model blueprint, to detailed design to navigate difficult choices. With carefully planned events for the different success model design teams to ‘showcase’ final proposed design products at the end of each step (or ‘chapter’).

• Involving those who will lead and manage the business from the outset - drawing leaders from different brands to work together on common success model design, supported by internal HR, Finance & BPM leads and selected business subject matter experts, within a carefully structured and orchestrated approach, framed by design principles and choices derived from purpose and strategy, centred on delivery of the product catalogue, and subject to review and ratchet agreement by senior decision-makers in milestone ‘showcase’ events.

Deliverables and Impact

The organisational re-design introduced product management, strengthened commercial management, standardised performance management, and reduced manpower cost (total and ratio vs sales) – yielding step-change results within 12 months (+ >50% customer NPS, - >10% cost/income, + >60% gross margin) and transforming performance within 2 years (3x profit).