Project at a glance
- £160 turnover after rapid growth
- Biggest player in the ECO market
- Over 1000 staff (half field based)
- Best in class training centre
- Highly valued utility partner
Problem
Our client, a £160m turnover private equity backed engineering services and retrofit specialists was experiencing margin pressure whilst not delivering its sales numbers.
The business needed to enact a rapid transformation to reduce overhead including headcount. The turnaround plan included a new target operating model backed by appropriate KPI’s and centralised systems.
Williams Bain supplied a career Interim manager who was a specialist in delivering rapid operational improvements for businesses that deploy a field based workforce.
Approach
- Conducted an As-Is end to end review of the operations to identify bottlenecks and understand failures. Used this and the RACI to develop a new TOM for the board
- Rolled out RACI to introduce accountability and ownership across the business. Conducted a volume exercise to understand optimised headcount.
- Established a new communications agenda and plan across the group to drive engagement and improve productivity.
- Facilitated and developed new ERP system requirements to further enhance efficiencies. Introduced AI and Automation to speed up manual tasks.
Results
Implementing the new T.O.M. Optimising operational performance with a customer centric approach ahead of systems changes
- Reduced office headcount by 135 FTE in 6 months, saving £6m while maintaining volume.
- Improved sales to cash lead time by 27%, improving liquidity position
- AI & Automation introduction identified further HC reduction savings of £1m
- Customer experience improved, increasing NPS by 2 points in 2 months
- Improved accountability and new structure helped with decision making and removed ambiguity
- Employee engagement improved, less attrition and improved performance by 43%
Skills and Experience
The Interim Manager – 99919101
- Operational Turnaround: Ability to work at pace to understand performance inefficiencies and provide solutions to deliver lasting change.
- Transformation: Delivers strategic and focused transformation that delivers results.
- Private Equity: Past 3 assignments have been with PE firms, driving operational improvements.
- Programme Management: Creating programmes of work to deliver on strategy, governance and cost.
- Stakeholder Engagement: Ability to engage at levels of the internal and external businesses to drive improvements
