Metal Stockist - UK

This company, part of the Alcan Group, had been losing market share for several years and also losing money. The business had lost its way strategically though attempts at vertical integration that did not work and were not functioning well.

The Solution - There most damaging was attempts to control transfer prices and sales prices through the mill channels. The business had invested heavily to grow sales and it had not worked because of the transfer pricing methods. I took this up with the UK board and managed to get a change in policy. It freed up the purchasing constraints for the mills and the stockists. This helped to improve the situation but the stockist was still underperforming and making a loss.

I carried out a review to identify the key business winning aspects of the business. This showed that the business was mainly done by telephone and that few customers needed to get a visit from a salesman on a regular basis. This meant that we did not need the number of sales staff on the road, but we did need more telephone sales staff in the locations. This was accepted by the board and we implemented a redundancy programme within the sales force.

The Result - The number of people at the peak was about 450, we were losing approximately £4M. We got to break even within 6 months and good made profits in the following year. The business profit rose rapidly and turnover reached £120M turnover in a two year period following a market share growth acquisition.