Designing a European planning hub: what stays local, what moves

Situation

A global consumer goods company launched a strategic programme to integrate and digitise operations across its country clusters and sales organisations. Customer development, order to cash, supply chain planning and S&OP, logistics and master data each had their own process owner, taxonomy and view of the future.

Local teams were also carrying process steps that needed no local judgement, such as routine demand planning work. The programme needed one design that decided what stays local and what moves to a central team.

Intervention

• Alignment. We brought the global process owners from each function onto one set of objectives and outcomes.
• One process view. We built a single process taxonomy across functions, removing duplication and exposing gaps, and developed detailed process designs.
• The central design test. We separated steps that need a local decision from steps that do not, and moved those steps out of the local organisations.
• Organisation design. We defined the organisation chart for a centre of excellence (COE) in a European hub, identified the roles to move from the regional organisations, and specified roles and responsibilities across the whole organisation.
• Clear accountability. We set out a RACI for every process, so each step has one owner and the boundary between the COE and local teams is explicit.
• Rollout kit. We packaged the design into a toolkit so further markets could assess fit and move over without redesigning it.

Result

• A European COE built with the right skills, staffed with experienced demand planners who run the centralised demand planning work, with its roles, scope and staffing defined.
• Clear ownership across the organisation: one organisation chart, defined roles and responsibilities, and a RACI tied to detailed process design, so the COE and local teams know who does what.
• One agreed process model across functions that later markets can reuse.