Adapting to prepare for future challenges

a major uk bank had undergone a fundamental organisational change. a new retail division was formed inheriting a mixture of businesses and functions spanning products, channels, marketing and brand management. how should they adapt to best address the challenges of the next 5 years?

From a seemingly disparate and unconnected set of functions, the Retail Division needed to establish a vision, a raison d'être, and an overall design which matched the accountabilities inherited through the organisational change. It needed a single coherent structure, one which aligned to the Group, the Customers, the emerging Transformation Division, an emerging view on segmentation, threats from new challenger banks and the cost stretches it faced over a three-year plan.

The Challenge

A repatriation of functionalised units, regrouping of businesses and coalescence of Product, Marketing, Brand and Channel Management functions together formed the basis of a new Retail Division. The need for a coherent vision was understood by the new management team who wanted a ‘Blue Sky’ design. The question was what should it be.

Our Solution

Our analysis led us quickly to understand there were fundamental issues of its scope, its design and its fit into the wider ‘eco-system’ of ‘Retail’ and the Bank as a whole. This assessment meant we were able to separate the analysis of the Division into components, examining its specific remit as well as how this would work across organisational boundaries.  Working through each of these fundamental design questions for the operating model our solution provided clarity on:

1. How to put Customer ‘at the heart’ of Retail

2. What should constitute Centres of Excellence

3. Simplification of Product Management as a ‘Blue Sky’ vision

4. An operating model which demonstrated the ways of working between Product, Brand, Channel and Customer accountabilities

5. Clear treatment strategies for businesses and functions which were non-core to the Division’s key purpose and accountabilities

6. ’Air traffic control’ across the wider Group Retail functions

7. OD options and the potential savings that would result from simplification and synergies