Client
The NE Asia President of a European manufacturer of polymer products planned to double revenue over the next five years and wanted to ensure that costs grew more slowly than revenues.
Challenge
A diversified polymer products manufacturer had set the ambitious target of doubling growth over the coming five years in NE Asia. Yet the region's board wanted to ensure that costs did not rise in parallel with revenues. Many administrative and business development functions operated the same way they had ten years ago. Therefore, the digitalization of business processes presented an opportunity to manage the increased workload associated with double-digit annual growth without significantly increasing headcount.
The digital transformation roadmap needed to be based on clear business priorities that the broader organization understood and accepted. It was critical that priorities were set from the bottom up since success would depend largely on the degree to which employees adopted the new processes.
Approach
Asia Growth Partners began by engaging employees because we knew that their acceptance of new processes and technical solutions would be critical. Our first step was to arrange a series of small group workshops and interviews with teams in all relevant functions. Over 30 meetings were held in total. These discussions helped to pinpoint organizational pain points and invested employees in the efficiency improvement objectives that we collectively set for their functions. They also highlighted potential points of friction that would later need to be addressed through training, modification of KPIs, and communication from management.
Our next step was to map solutions to the pain points and operational improvement areas that we identified. Over 70 solutions were mapped to roughly 110 pain points. These were then prioritized based on technical feasibility, organizational readiness, and business impact. A roadmap was prepared to guide implementation, with detailed implementation plans and vendor profiles prepared for solutions that would be deployed in the coming 12 months. Business cases were prepared for all other prioritized solutions. Both the NE Asia management team and operational teams were involved at every step of the process to ensure that budgeting proceeded smoothly and that employees were not surprised by the roadmap.
- Engage employees via workshops and interviews to secure acceptance of new processes and solutions.
- Pinpoint organizational pain points and efficiency improvement objectives.
- Highlight potential points of friction to address through training, modification of KPIs, and communication.
- Map solutions to the pain points and operational improvement areas.
- Prepare a roadmap to guide implementation, with technical plans, vendor profiles, and business cases.
