Aligning Operations and Organization Structure
The Client
Global 100 trading company brokering industrial products and services.
The Challenge
Our client adopted a new business model to combat declining margins and increasingly restrictive trade policies. Although the new business model promises higher margins, it also requires greater operational complexity. That is, under the new business model, the client offers customers value added services that also leverage the company’s core competencies in financing, transportation, and logistics. In contrast, the original business model is simpler as it focuses on trading activity in a limited range of industrial products.
Adoption of the new business model has been uneven due largely to a decentralized organization structure. Moreover, adoption has also been slowed by legacy processes and systems ill-suited for supporting the activities emerging from the new business model. As the adoption has been slow, profits have declined. Aware of these issues and under pressure to grow net after tax profit, our client sought guidance on: (1) how to restructure its organization in order to facilitate adoption of its new business model and (2) which key business processes and systems needed revamping.
The Solution
HighQuest Partners developed a recommended organization structure designed to facilitate adoption of the client’s new business model. The recommended organization structure distributes authority centrally as well as clarifies departmental roles and accountabilities, particularly with respect to profit centers. In addition to the organization structure, HighQuest also provided a detailed organization chart, specifying what activities are to be performed and by whom.
HighQuest Partners also identified missing key business processes and ones that need revamping. HighQuest outlined each key process to help the client understand the process’s key objectives and how the process works, starting from the information needed to perform the process, key processing steps, and concluding with the outputs the process produces. An evaluation of supporting systems platforms was also included in this work.
The approach followed ensured all relevant stakeholders were engaged both inside MSI and the parent company, including corporate HR and the centralized services center.
The Results
The new organization structure and outlines to improve key business processes helped position our client to fully embrace its new business model as well as succeed with it through stronger business processes. Action was taken very swiftly to publicize the new structure and allocate changed responsibilities.
