The transport company experienced strong growth before the reorganization and is now one of the largest providers in the corresponding market. The regional holding company employs several thousand people and most recently generated annual revenue in the billions of euros. Following this strong growth phase, the mobility provider urgently needed to adapt its structures, processes and (IT) systems, etc. to be able to realize the economic advantages of the company’s new scope.

As an upstream step, management first implemented a profit improvement program. Within this step, they identified a hugely ambitious target as a key optimization measure: Comprehensive reorganization. This was required with a view to significantly reducing costs and making management of the company easier across all operational units. The basis for the organizational realignment was to be a common understanding of processes, roles and responsibilities. The managers saw this as an essential prerequisite for realizing the required synergetic and/or scale advantages in the dimensioning of the future organizational units. One particular challenge was that employees were strongly rooted in their individual operational units. This led the company to focus from the very start on appropriately involving the workforce in the redesign of the organization. The goal was that all employees should share a common vision. In addition, the leadership relied on strengthening a shared identity and ensuring that the new structure was impactful.

To achieve this goal, the mobility company brought Horváth consultants on board. The decisive factors in making this choice were, above all, industry expertise and the company’s corporate transformation approach. This approach integrates three elements together. With the first element – “Shape” – the focus was on the profit contributions that would be realized in the course of the reorganization. The second element, “Create”, closely connected those profit contributions with the core task of designing a structure that is fit for the future. Finally, the third element of the Horváth approach, “Empower”, anchored the reorganization by means of close communication and change support at all levels of the company.

During implementation, a bottom-up approach was coupled with a top-down approach. The Horváth team developed the new processes, roles and responsibilities together with middle management levels and other experts at the mobility company. At the same time, the consultants discussed the top-down structure development closely with the top management team. Best practice approaches and structograms formed the basis of this coordination. Respectful collaboration with managers and employees in combination with consulting  the top management team proved to be factors for success. All sides worked in concert and considered themselves to be one team with a common task.

In parallel to the bottom-up work, the Horváth team worked together with top management to develop alternative structure variants, evaluated them, and selected the target structure that was appropriate for the mobility company. The resulting framework brought the roles defined in the bottom-up procedure together into organizational units efficiently and with few intersections. This meant that the manager and employee expertise infused into the process work could be combined with the strategic alignment from a management perspective. In this way, a structure was created that addresses the customer’s specific challenges in the best way possible. At the same time, this approach paved the way for smooth implementation of the reorganization. Potential resistance was even minimized in advance by inclusion in the team of affected employees as “participants” in the project.

The Horváth experts then dimensioned the target organization with the designated divisional and functional managers. Among other elements, the Horváth team brought in best practices and benchmarks from comparable industry companies as a basis for discussion and an aid to orientation, and moderated the process.

In addition, the Horváth team also developed the necessary content-related foundations for implementation in parallel to the design. These included a negotiable personnel transfer matrix, the preparation of the content for upcoming negotiations with the employee representatives and the owner, and a roadmap that brought together all the measures relevant for implementation.

Appreciative and inspiring collaboration with managers and employees coupled with consulting and sparring with top management on an equal footing are important success factors in this. This collaborative approach in particular has led to everyone in the company working in concert with Horváth and seeing themselves as one team with a common task.

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