Case History

Merchants Group Ltd

Client situation
The Board wanted to reorganise the Group, in line with its plans to sell within the next five years. Their concern was that the severe and unavoidable disruption entailed would lead to an exodus of the best people, and an unacceptable drop in performance, at a time when a minimum 20% growth year on year was required.

Client problem
To dismantle two companies and reform into one, whilst at the same time increasing profits and retaining and developing the human capital.

What we did
Supported the project stakeholders to:

• Merge two companies and relocate the resulting organisation
• Analyse and redesign process work flow
• Analyse culture and productivity and map out the ideal
• Move from a hierarchical management structure and ethos to a self-managing team oriented approach
• Identify and manage through necessary redundancies based on an analysis of individual requirements for growth and development as well as corporate performance needs
• Build and install the new management team and infrastructure

Results
Turnover in the first year of trading for the combined organisation exceeded the sum of the two constituent organisations by 38.5%. The Group was successfully sold within two years of this programme.

"The relocation and culture change were vital, but risky - we were completely satisfied with the outcome and the very satisfactory leverage of performance."