The future success of any company depends on how effectively the organisation adjusts to challenges, such as decreases in performance, aftermath of mergers and acquisitions, strategic shifts, competitive pressure, and customer-demand changes. A company’s ability to adjust to new challenges is defined by the flexibility of its organisational capabilities, the actual organisational structures, the processes, the quality and motivation of its people, and the openness of its culture.
At the same time, ongoing volatility has highlighted the importance of governance models, the consequences of certain incentive schemes, and the inadequacy of risk management practices across many industries. The problems which have been exposed have occurred throughout organisations, both in terms of overall strategy and governance models.
Improving group structures will often deliver both cost and compliance benefits. From removing a single group company to simplifying multiple entities, restructuring a group can facilitate operations, aid transparency, and boost stakeholder confidence.
Corporate simplification promotes better risk management, both in terms of security and to keep up with constantly changing regulatory requirements. There are also often upsides to be gained through tax efficiency, along with reduced operational costs and professional fees.
Responding to these changes requires defining and implementing best practices in such a way as to gain capabilities, minimise cost increases, and simplify communication with customers, employees, regulators, and investors.
Our overall aim is to help your company to gain competitive advantage by designing and implementing the organisation that best fits your purpose. Our approach enables a holistic view of your organisation’s structure, processes, and resources in close connection with your strategic opportunities.
Some of the common questions we hear from our clients are:
Is the organisation structure the best fit and 'right-sized' for executing the business strategy, whilst building functional capabilities?
Has the organisation structure in-built agility and scalability, and does it allow for resources to work both 'in' the business and 'on' the business?
Is the span of control balanced between flexibility and management reach?
Is the role of various governing bodies (Board, management teams) clearly defined and linked to performance management?
Are meetings held with appropriate frequency and effective meeting disciplines applied?
Are powers of delegation clearly defined and communicated and aligned with the organisational culture?
Are both enterprise-wide and functional policies and rules documented and communicated with consequences for non-compliance?
Is the organisation's risk appetite appropriate to its strategy, and is there a defined approach to risk identification and mitigation?
Our specialist team has the breadth of experience and technical knowledge needed to create and execute specific plans to suit every circumstance – covering the whole process from analysis and assessment, to meetings with key stakeholders, due diligence and delivery.
We help you address today's volatile environment by defining and implementing best practices in organisational design.
Our consultants help clients design organisations which reduce costs, drive growth, and strengthen both short-term performance and long-term organisational health.
Henderton has experience in all aspects of improving governance, including:
Organisational redesign: form follows function – assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the current organisation and design of a robust new structure covering structure, linkages, and culture, defining roles and responsibilities, determining reporting lines and accountability, optimising teams, streamlining hierarchical layers, and aligning job descriptions and talent requirements.
Link organisation to strategy: focus on the strategic priorities and critical operations of each business unit, region, or product to quickly realise the economic value of the redesign.
Corporate structure: definition of appropriate boundaries for lines of business and design of shared services, centres of expertise and other coordinating mechanisms which allow a company to leverage scale and expertise, resource levels and locations.
Governance: alignment of executive forums and management processes which yield high-quality decisions on strategic priorities, resource allocation and business performance management supported by a management dashboard with the key metrics keeps the focus on the company’s top priorities.
Accountability: roles and responsibilities of the main organisational entities, including ownership of P&Ls and design of performance-management processes so all units have clear performance measures and decision-making frameworks to help identify accountability for cross-unit processes.
Role of the centre: definition of the optimal corporate centre balancing a minimalist holding company where governance processes occur primarily at the business-unit level and a more comprehensive functional centre with more centralisation.
Head office value creation: avoiding redundant hierarchy to identify an explicit, value-adding "mandate" for the corporate centre, such as co-ordinating key functions or driving specific strategic initiatives.
If you would like to learn more about our experience, please contact our Operations practice team.
Please contact us for more information on our past projects.
For a power retailer seeking major revenue growth, a new organisational design supported by strategy transformed the sales model, eliminating non-value-added activities, and strengthening top management’s role as “super coaches” to the sales team. Profits grew by 25 percent in a year.
In a global consumer goods company, a new CEO reduced the corporate centre by 50 percent, redesigned key HR and finance processes for efficiency, and consolidated fragmented supply-chain functions. Savings totalled $500 million over 3 years.
A global consumer goods manufacturer eliminated complexity in several regions and functions, halving the time it needed to make decisions in critical processes. This helped it bring products to market faster in response to changing customer needs.
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Henderton acts as independent, trusted advisors to innovative companies throughout their growth lifecycle.
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