Life Sciences Agricultural Division
The client is the agricultural products division of a major international life sciences business involved in research, development, manufacturing, and marketing of herbicides, insecticides and fungicides.
The Challenge
Over the last 10 years the client’s headquarters had grown into an expensive overhead. With a worldwide downturn in the agrochemical business, the CEO required a leaner, more effective headquarters operation.
Capgemini Approach
We were engaged to revitalize the headquarters function through a number of initiatives aimed at:
- Refocusing the headquarters on business needs
- Redesigning the global planning system
- Improving key management processes
- Aligning the management team around a common vision
The analysis was based on input from an international managers’ conference, a behavioral survey, and targeted interviews. The analysis identified seven major improvement opportunities:
- Visionary leadership to ensure the organization stayed ahead in a changing marketplace
- Better management behaviors to align with business performance and strategy
- Improved technology and market foresight
- Downsized HQ and improved efficiency
- Improved perception of HQ, which had a confusing role and variability in quality of output
- Improved basic management processes (i.e., it had a cumbersome decision-making process and an unclear performance measurement framework)
- A radically redesigned planning process that incorporated the different needs of the geographical territories and product groups
Working closely with the client, our joint teams partnered for six months to tackle the business issue of improving HQ capability and efficiency. The goal was to achieve sustainable improvement in four key areas:
- A management team aligned around a common vision and operating effectively to deliver that vision
- An HQ that exhibits the qualities of vibrant organizations
- A 20% saving in the cost of running the HQ
- A global business planning process incorporating the needs of the regions and product managers
Value Delivered
The project was delivered on time and in full. The client achieved the following:
- Signed-off plan for the 20% downsizing of HQ, based on an agreed reduction of services and the elimination of duplicated activities
- A plan to change behaviors in the organization to incorporate more openness and vibrancy
- A global planning process that incorporates the needs of the regional manager and product managers to produce a one- year agreed plan, and a five-year business plan for regional market growth and global product development
- An agreed list of business measures at the Board level, showing who is accountable for each one and how they roll down to regional, functional, and product measures.
