Case Studies
Here are just a couple of the many client assignments that have been delivered by Strategy2Life in recent years.
Finance Strategy Execution Framework
The Client: Global Chief Financial Officer in an international professional services organisation with a turnover of around A$1 billion and 6500 employees.
The Context: The new CFO worked with the senior team to set a new strategy for the Finance function, with the goal of transforming it from a focus on traditional accounting and transaction processing to a value-adding business partner.
The Challenge: Following the implementation of a new structure and injection of new talent into the senior management team, day-to-day “busy-ness” took over, and progress on implementing the strategy became ad hoc.
Our Contribution: Strategy2Life worked with the CFO and Finance leadership team to -
- Develop tangible plans, metrics, initiatives, and change management activities to support strategy execution.
- Measure execution progress as viewed by key stakeholder groups.
- Re-design the annual strategic conference format to facilitate cross-pollination of ideas, improve engagement, joint problem-solving, and ownership.
- Establish a management framework, processes and tools to provide sufficient discipline to prioritise, plan and track initiatives without being too onerous in an operationally-driven environment.
- Revamp the structure of regular management meetings to address a balance of operational vs strategic issues, and improve communication across Finance functions, geographies and the business.
- Facilitate the identification of priority leadership capability development needs to support anticipated organisational growth.
The Consequence: Paved the way for execution success through building the appropriate management processes and engagement mechanisms to embed the strategy and track its progress.
HR Growth Strategy Execution – program management
The Client: Divisional General Manager of HR within a large Australian bank. The division had approximately 7,000 employees out of a total of about 40,000 bank-wide.
The Context: The division decided to pursue an aggressive organic growth strategy, with the need to recruit, onboard, develop, and geographically transfer unprecedented numbers of employees. This resulted in the need to review the adequacy of the HR operating model and implement operational improvements, in order to address current service issues and accommodate the planned growth.
The Challenge: The HR organisation within the bank operated under a shared services model, with limited scope for division-specific customisations of services and delivery mechanisms. Most of the HR services used by the division were delivered by the shared services organisation.
Our Contribution: Strategy2Life worked with the divisional HR leadership team and key HR shared services managers to:
- Identify the main “pain points” in current service delivery against the projected business needs as a result of the division’s growth strategy.
- Identify and prioritise service improvement initiatives to address key “pain points” experienced by the division.
- Establish program management and governance disciplines and processes to ensure a high level of business ownership and focus on delivery.
- Work with business-as-usual initiative owners to plan, track and deliver service improvements and new differentiated services.
- Engage and collaborate with shared service and corporate head office colleagues to ensure the division’s business needs are taken into account in group-wide improvement initiatives.
- Work with service delivery areas within shared services to improve management reporting to the division and, in some cases, establish entirely new metrics that align with the division’s business needs.
The Consequence: The HR stream within the strategy execution program was widely seen as one of the most well progressed in delivering agreed strategic outcomes for the division. As a result, this significantly raised the credibility of the entire HR function within the business as a key enabler of the strategy.
Contact us today to discuss how Strategy2Life can help bring your strategy to life!
