The Challenge
A UK scale-up – recently backed by private equity – had acquired a US-based peer to accelerate growth and capitalise on complementary strengths. They needed a fast, pragmatic approach that preserved each business’s day-one autonomy while laying the foundations for group-wide collaboration and future acquisitions.
The key challenge was achieving integration without disrupting performance, and delivering an improved customer experience through shared capabilities. The new organisation needed clear structures, roles and ways of working to unlock efficiencies and create transparent career paths.
What We Did
Through an accelerated six-week project, we delivered three phases of work to create the new operating model. We engaged cross-functional stakeholders in defining the future state, including decisions on what activity belonged at group versus business-unit level.
We worked with the client to:
- Develop a scalable structure and governance model, with a new group leadership layer plus shared roles within each business, enabling day-one autonomy and the gradual build-out of global functions
- Design clear roles and an accountability matrix to support decision speed, ensuring customers of both organisations had consistent end-to-end experiences
- Define capability clusters and role families, such that there could be transparent career paths and a structured approach to skill development
The Impact
By co-creating with the client, we were able to build strong buy-in and ensure the final design would work in practice. Through the work, the client was able to gain:
- Additional investment from the Board to retain and recruit key talent for critical leadership roles
- Efficiency through the introduction of shared capabilities, which formed a key part of the synergy case for the acquisition
- A more flexible model that could expand to integrate future acquisitions and integrations in the UK or globally
The organisation has now entered its next growth phase with confidence and is continuing to win awards in the sector.