On Tuesday morning wake up and head for the airport for a flight to Madrid.
On arrival at CDG, the team – Louise, Valentin and Thomas – is already there and we enjoy a coffee and a croissant to prepare the day ahead and divide the roles of each.
The documents were printed the day before and we prepared well for this day, which is very important for the rest of the project.
Two hours later, we arrived in Madrid.
It is very nice but no time to enjoy the sweetness of Spain because the day promises to be difficult: we must present the first results of phase I of the project namely baselines of costs by function SG & A and the first results of benchmarks both internal and external, highlighting significant differences in certain functions …
The subject is delicate and it will be necessary to show a lot of conviction to have the support of the teams and to define the actions to be put in place!
So we start the morning with a debrief with the boss of the country and its financial director: they are “challenging” but the discussion is constructive and we arrive late morning to define the key actions to launch to meet the objectives. They also take advantage of our presence to push some topics already launched but have fallen behind the heavy operational constraints of their daily lives.
1PM, it’s already time for lunch and we leave with the team and customers in a restaurant where they usually go.
This is an opportunity to get to know the team better and discuss the economic context in Spain and the forthcoming elections in Catalonia, a subject that generates a lot of debate!
In the afternoon, we have reviews with the bosses of the functions concerned by the actions to be launched and who take a look outside their organization and operation.
It shows us their organization and how they work, which allows us to better understand the specificities of the country and their function as well as their expectations.
We then build together the detailed schedule for the next 6 weeks and we detail the list of data to collect before planning our next interactions.
We end the day with a quick synthesis with the boss of the country to ensure that we are well aligned with its key expectations and we return to the airport.
Everyone takes the opportunity to answer to his emails and we made a quick debrief between us.
The day was intensive but we leave with clear ideas and a customer “on-board”!