Digital Operating Model Reset

Mandate Overview

A multi-entity industrial group operating across several countries needed to reset its back-office operating model within 12 months. The CIO and Group COO were accountable to the board for delivering significant annualised savings without any disruption to customer-facing operations. We were retained to build the execution office, govern the phased rollout, and report to the board on delivery against the business case.

What Was at Risk

A failed transformation would have triggered a write-down of the existing technology investment and forced a significant delay in the group's growth timeline. Two prior transformation attempts had stalled at the pilot stage due to inadequate governance and lack of rollback criteria. The board required a fundamentally different execution model with entity-level risk controls and phase-gate accountability.

The Challenge

The CIO and Group COO faced critical transformation constraints:

• Multi-entity operations requiring transformation without service disruption
• Back-office costs significantly above benchmarks with no unified technology platform
• No execution governance framework to manage cross-entity change

Our Solution

We established a phased execution office with partner-led governance, board-level KPI reporting, and entity-by-entity sequencing designed to protect service continuity. Each phase was risk-controlled with clear rollback criteria, milestone accountability, and real-time control monitoring across all entities.

Results