Improving performance of a PE owned international logistics service provider

The Situation

• The customer is a large European logistics service provider which operates in more than 140 countries. It is 100% PE owned.
• While the company was growing through acquisitions in many countries, working methods had not evolved to adapt to the changing environment and profitability dropped.
• An extensive program aimed at radically changing some fundamental processes was launched. The objective was to implement cross-cutting actions between countries instead of trying to optimize the results of each one independently.

The Solution

• The interim manager role was primarily to help country managers and business leaders identify concrete actions to improve performance. These actions focused on operational processes designed and deployed internationally (instead of locally) to make the company more attractive and increase revenues.
• Shared service centres were set up in a European country where labour costs are lower, a Group Purchasing team was created, the core system was overhauled and digital technologies to improve CS were developed.

The Results

• The X-PM interim manager was so successful that he was hired as CRO, Group HR Director and member of the Executive Committee a few months after he started the mission. He concluded that new financing was required.
• X-PM was subsequently selected for two other assignments to continue the transformation of the company: management of the Information Systems for 18 months and of the Purchasing Group for one year.