Consolidation of individual companies to Group structure

Three independent retail legal entities were operating as individual companies and businesses with complete organisations and processes within each entity. The companies differed by size, sales, product/service portfolio, international penetration, sourcing or competition. However, all businesses targeted the same industry sectors and clients which resulted already in shared marketing activities i.e. participation in fairs.

Considering these facts, we started to develop a Group structure top-down (strategic) as well as bottom-up, based upon the specifics of each product segment. The new Group structure was supposed to build on the already existing market presence and to raise additional market and sales potential.

Furthermore, it was equally important to still differentiate customer facing functions to allow for customers to also select competitors and not a “package solution” if they felt appropriate.

As key market requirements we allowed roughly for creativity to explore retail concepts, digitalization and maximizing space utilisation. The conceptual consolidation of the three businesses resulted in an organization with an operational holding structure and market led business units. The holding included all functions which were not customer facing but benefitting from a central approach to management and control, i.e. product development/sourcing/HR/ finance. The business units represented all customer facing functions with a central responsibility to avoid cannibalism in between.

Processes were all aligned to the new structure and vice versa. The consolidation allowed a stronger market positioning as solution provider especially on international level, a more focused and faster market and customer development, reduced complexity and significant savings in overhead cost.