Situation

Our client was a Polish branch of a global company operating in the financial sector. The company provides asset-based financial solutions in the agriculture, food, healthcare, cleantech, construction, transportation, industrial and office technology industries. The client’s company cooperates with equipment manufacturers, dealers and distributors in more than 30 countries, supporting their distribution channels and business development.

Challenges

Planning its further development in Poland in the area of both large, medium and small transactions and wishing to maintain an appropriate level of financial efficiency, the company planned to restructure its operational processes (including sales support, contract processing, payment initiation and customer service) and support them with modern IT tools. The organisation did not have the competence to digitise processes and decided to entrust the task to an Interim Manager acquired from the market. The Interim Manager’s tasks were to include:

• day-to-day management of the operations department, including leading the team through the change process;
• leading a project that is intended to significantly change the entire operational area (processes, tools, resource utilisation, structure);
• support for the company in the selection of IT tools to support new processes;
• co-representation of the Polish branch in project matters to the head office.
  

Action

Within 7 working days, CTER based on its pool of Interim Managers presented 7 candidates to the client for the position of Interim Chief Digital Officer. After a series of meetings, the client decided to start working with one of the presented candidates and entrusted him with the mission of digitising processes and transforming the organisation.

Results

Within 16 months, a programme of process reorganisation and automation was implemented to maximise the simplification and mechanisation of the handling of approximately 80% of the ‘low-ticket’ contracts handled allowing for the following:

• reduced process times;
• an increase in the return on capital of 15%;
• a 15% reduction in the cost of operations relative to the value of business handled (while increasing it by 35%);
• freeing up human resources, previously busy processing repetitive business, for new tasks (processing large projects, business development, etc.).