Organization and strategy

Public and private organizations in the Middle East are undergoing constant organizational change in order to deal with demands for more and better services, lower costs, higher quality, and greater efficiency. While the need for a solid organizational change management strategy is widely understood, how to successfully implement change within an organization is not. Failed change management initiatives inevitably lead to operational inefficiency, lost time and money, lower productivity and morale, and reduced market share.

Strategy&’s organizational change management experts assist clients with managing change effectively, identifying areas of improvement, and implementing performance management strategies. Our team of experts can help organizations in the Middle East design operating models to meet the needs of shareholders, customers, and constituencies in the organization’s extended enterprise.

Key trends

In today’s world, organizations (both public and private) are undergoing constant change in order to deal with demands for more and better services, higher quality, lower costs, and greater efficiency. While the need for change is widely understood, the ability to successfully manage and implement change within an organization is not, resulting in failed implementation efforts, inefficiency, lost time and money, lower productivity and morale, and reduced market share.

How we help our clients

Strategy&’s organization and strategy team in the Middle East helps clients achieve their change imperatives and strategic goals by managing change effectively; organizing appropriately; and optimizing workforce, organizations, and processes to enable people and organizations to perform at their full potential. We do this through our primary service offerings of transformation and change management, corporate performance management, and strategic human capital management.

Transformation and change management
Corporate performance management
Strategic human capital management

Transformation and change management

Transformation and change management ensures that the organization’s transformation effort will systematically:

Identify and quantify the changes required to stay competitive and meet customer and stakeholder demands
Develop an implementation strategy that addresses all aspects of change required (for example, in people, process, technology, or infrastructure)
Achieve a common understanding of the case for change
Build leadership and execution capabilities to drive and sustain change
Engage key stakeholders in identifying and resolving issues, securing buy-in and ownership of the change process
Gain project credibility and trust with frequent, effective communications.

Corporate performance management

Corporate performance management ensures that corporate planning will result in effective strategies and operational success. It does so by engaging leaders in a structured approach to:

Establish a vision that describes the organization’s desired future state, and identify key priorities and initiatives for getting there
Develop a strategic plan to achieve the vision, including setting specific goals, defining organizational responsibilities, and crafting strategies
Create annual operational plans to implement the goals of the strategic plan, including performance measures to quantify results
Align budgets and resources to enable the implementation of these plans
Assess business performance regularly to ensure that plans are being implemented and achieving the desired results.

Strategic human capital management

Strategic human capital management ensures that organizations make the most of their people by building the internal capability to:

Develop and implement a human capital strategy that meshes with corporate goals
Identify the competencies employees need to perform their jobs
Establish effective recruitment, staffing, and retention programs
Implement performance assessment systems and rewards programs tied to achievement of strategic goals and objectives
Create career and leadership development programs to provide a continuous learning environment and to ensure a leadership pipeline
Develop succession planning programs to ensure that as senior leaders retire, corporate knowledge and capabilities are not lost
Promote diversity and work/life management programs.

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Client examples

Government restructuring
Court system transformation
Customs process improvement
Shared-services implementation

Government restructuring

After feeling the growth pains of significant socioeconomic progress, the government of a Gulf ‎Cooperation Council country required a strategy to transform and modernize government ‎operations to improve its services. The country launched a full-scale government restructuring ‎program and retained Strategy& to support the development of the strategy, the design, ‎and the implementation of the full program.

Working with government counterparts, the Strategy& team created strategies and operating models for all major government structures. ‎These models redesigned and streamlined the public sector, transformed services delivery ‎through effective use of technology, and enhanced citizen participation in decisions. A program ‎management office was created to carry out the restructuring initiatives.

By the second phase ‎of the plan, the government-wide transformation was experiencing tremendous success ‎through trusted client relationships, increased stakeholder awareness, and major efficiency ‎improvements.

Court system transformation

For a court system in a Gulf country, Strategy& is supporting a strategic transformation to modernize operations and ensure independent, transparent, and accessible court services for citizens, residents, and businesses. Strategy& baselined operations against international best practices, identified performance gaps, and developed a new operating model to achieve world-class standards tailored to the unique needs of the local culture.

A workforce analysis was conducted to determine the appropriate numbers of judges and support staff required in each location, and integrated strategic planning, budgeting, and performance management processes are being implemented to enable leadership to effectively manage the modernized court system.

To support this transformation process, Strategy& is also helping the court system to build an internal program management capability, and a robust internal and external communications function to ensure appropriate messaging and communications to internal and external stakeholders.

Customs process improvement

For the customs authority of a Middle East country, Strategy& was asked to help transform the clearance process and develop an expedited service at seaports for the top 200 importers.

The client’s goal was to reduce the clearance process time to 24 hours or less. Strategy& reviewed the existing clearance processes and benchmarked them against best practices, analyzed the regulatory framework, and developed a new operating model.

The firm also created a change management plan to effectively implement these changes within the customs authority. As a result, the clearance times were dramatically reduced.

Shared-services implementation

A large energy company needed to revise its operating model in the context of a major IT transformation program. Strategy& was engaged to help the client understand new operating models that rely on shared services, develop an “umbrella strategy” for the transformation effort, and design a shared-services organization to deliver support functions.

The Strategy& team created a master strategy for shared-services implementation, designed a screening process to identify support functions suitable for shared services, assessed what cost savings opportunities were available through economies of scale, and provided guidance on the shared-services organization model.

In a second phase, Strategy& developed a baseline for existing support functions operations; identified savings opportunities in each of these support functions arising from economies of scale, process redesign, and improved demand management; quantified economic benefits for the entire organization and for each affiliate; and designed service offerings, service delivery processes, organization structures, pricing, and service-level agreements (SLAs). The client adopted the design and has moved to the implementation phase.