Shared Services & GBS
Setting-up or transforming shared services is about critical business-support functions. Options for where to locate them to abound. Many companies select top-of-mind locations, only to face fierce war for talent
Shared services & GBS can fail, for example when companies:
- Ill-align locations with their Shared services & GBS processes
- Ignore the need for scalability
- Underestimate how location impacts TOM/SDM, and ramp-up phasing
- Ignore destination options off the beaten track
- Do not adapt their organization and managent style to local practices
We ensure robust Shared services & GBS decisions by:
- Identifying how location options impact TOM and SDM
- Selecting cities where your operations can scale-up
- Balancing cost efficiency and service quality
- Advising on captive versus outsourcing
- Selecting mirco-locations that help to attract and retain talent
Manufacturing
Adding or moving production capacity leads to long term and capital-intensive commitments. Such location decisions cannot be rolled-back easily, warranting expert support
Manufacturing location can go wrong for many reasons, including:
- Selecting a search area on first thoughts rather than on informed perspectives
- Inadequate assessment of labor pool breadth and skill depth
- Focus on optimizing just labor costs
- Too optimistic views on access to markets and suppliers
- Using overseas' plant specifications without tailoring them to local circumstances
We ensure efficient and robust Manufacturing location decisions by:
- Distilling the critical location drivers of your project
- Quickly zooming in on viable locations
- Adequate due-diligence on cost and non-cost factors
- Developing realistic expectations regarding incentives
- Careful development of exit strategies
Offices
How people work evolves rapidly. So does the role of offices. Yet companies will continue to have them for the predictable future. But they will be different from the past. It is all about work and place, all while keeping costs at acceptable levels
Typical challences when making office location decisions::
- What type of workplace and where
- How can space stimulate innovation, collaborative working, scrum development
- How to structure to tomorrow’s mobility imperatives
- How to optimize/consolidate multiple sites after M&A
- How to reduce office exploitation costs
We ensure robust Office decisions by:
- Carefully mapping working relationships and proximity needs
- Assessing feasibility to implement new ways of working
- Detailing lease versus buy options and negotiating rents
- Forging all-stakeholder support
- Developing and implementing effective change management
Economic development
FDI competition between cities, regions and countries increases daily. It calls for sound development strategies, smart value propositions and effective investment attraction organization and tactics. Only a few organizations seem to have hit the mark
Key causes for FDI promotion to fail include:
- Strategies not aligned with the location offer, or with what
investors really want
- Overestimation of own strengths, underestimation of the competition
- Unclear focus of effforts and communication
- Too little business acumen in the investment promotion agency
- Lack of coordination, of top-level commitment and no unified approach by local stakeholders
We lay the basis for successful FDI promotion by:
- Defining a location’s SWOT from the investor’s viewpoint
- Developing realistic sectoral development and go-to-market strategies
- City and regional benchmarking
- Structuring investment agencies and mobilizing local partners support
- Delivering tailored trainings and coaching