Company
A global pharmaceutical company, >$25B annual revenues

Background
Three years before the engagement began, Company A acquired another large, global pharma provider, which resulted in a 70% increase in global operations - much of it in Europe. Helen Crandall was assigned as VP of European Operations and charged with merging the operations of the combined company's IT systems - and realizing major savings in the process.

Helen recognized that the critical first step in this transformation was to build a strong leadership team. Europe had been organized regionally, with little communication among the various countries. Helen needed to pull the countries together to explore synergies, while also beginning to link them to the corporate headquarters in New York. She faced healthy doses of fear and skepticism among the country leaders - and a tight timeframe dictated by corporate headquarters. To make matters worse, Helen was experiencing repeated communication failures with her boss, the CTO.

On the positive side, many of the country heads were high-quality leaders with committed staffs. Also, the culture wasn't as political as at headquarters and the communication was more straightforward, which allowed Helen to more quickly surface underlying issues or problems.

Process and Organizational Changes
Helen moved to Europe for one year while she led this transformation. Her first step: ask her boss if she could have a professional coach, explaining that her Number One goal was to change the state of their relationship by improving their communication. He said yes, and she began working with Brimstone on an individual coaching plan that centered on 360-degree feedback from members of her European team. After reviewing and processing the feedback, Helen stood in front of the team, shared what she had learned and described her action plan. After addressing her shortcomings, she outlined the expectations and goals she had for the team and the organization.

This meeting was followed immediately by the launch of a Senior Team Alignment Process (STAP), a series of offsite workshops designed to build an effective leadership team, assess and manage operational changes, and drive alignment across the region and with corporate. Early in the process, Brimstone worked with Helen and her team to clearly define roles and responsibilities, re-think the organizational structure, and build a culture of openness that would facilitate continuous communication and interaction across the region during the transformation.

To ensure alignment, Brimstone walked Helen and her team through the process of developing a Strategic Business Framework (SBF) that was linked to corporate IT's SBF. The European version of the document was designed to help everyone in the organization understand the objectives of the transformation, how the specific changes would contribute to these objectives, and how they changes tied into the company's overall IT strategy.

Knowing that effective communication was a weak spot, Helen hired a communications person to work with each leader on status reports, which are sent to Helen so that she can keep the CTO apprised of progress in Europe. Brimstone also encouraged her to initiate one-on-one meetings with the CTO every two weeks and to form a European advisory council composed of the business and IT leaders from across Europe.

Financial Results
By gaining alignment and clearly delineating roles, Helen and her leadership team were able to make informed, smart decisions. And by opening clear channels of communication across the organization, they were able to execute on the decisions swiftly and effectively. Over the course of Helen's year in Greece, the European organization:

• Reorganized Germany and Italy to realize $2M in savings
• Transformed the company's manufacturing operations in Ireland, France, Italy, Sweden, and the UK, resulting in $1M in savings
• Reevaluated and renegotiated a major vendor contract for the Manufacturing group, resulting in $1M in savings while greatly improving service
• Reorganized a key R&D site, netting $2.7M in savings

Conclusion
Though the European integration would have occurred with or without Brimstone's involvement, both Helen and the CTO are certain that the efficiency and effectiveness of the transformation would have been compromised without the STAP. The process offered structure, accountability, continuity, alignment with corporate headquarters and a clear methodology for communication. The short-term financial impact of the changes implemented via STAP was significant, yielding nearly $7M in improvements, and longer-term initiatives launched during the process promise to drive more than $10M in additional savings.