Mergers and Acquisitions

Corporate real estate group of major bank successfully sets groundwork integration following large acquisition.

"Our U.S. merger presented a significant challenge to our department: the goals were difficult to articulate and therefore measure. Taurus Project Consulting brought a sense of calming order and process. They took what appeared to be hugely complex and unruly, and convert it into an explainable, achievable plan – complete with critical path, metrics, timelines, budgets & interdependencies."

Murray Dea – VP Corporate Real Estate

Challenge
The corporate real estate division of a large bank was facing the fallout after their company`s $8.5 billion acquisition of another financial institution. They were tasked with achieving close to $20 million in cutbacks for their group over time through a range of daunting initiatives, from headcount reduction to outsourcing. They needed someone to spearhead this project and provide solid direction to ensure they integrate the two companies efficiently and successfully rebrand the organization to bolster employee, customer and stakeholder confidence.

Solution
Taurus Project Consulting set up a Project Management Office (PMO) to drive this highly complex integration initiative. From there, they set up a series of procedures, policies and an organizational chart to identify and manage the various projects – in order to satisfy the requirements of the Integration Program Management Office (IPMO). In all, Taurus Consulting provided:

• Project definition, charters and plans including - budgets, risk analysis, timelines and milestones. This complex initiative broke down into 6 projects that Taurus would lead:
  1. $100 million rebranding project
  2. North American outsourcing project
  3. Retail branch consolidation
  4. Retail branch renovations
  5. Non-retail portfolio optimization to support line of business merger activities
  6. Internal department integration process redesign project
• Project managers - to efficiently drive the individual initiatives, overseen by Taurus
• Workshop facilitation - To plan projects and identify objectives, risks, tasks and deadlines
• Effective reporting process - To ensure executives company-wide were in the loop on the initiatives and achievements of this division

Results
Taurus Project Consulting helped this division:

• Consolidate all branches and close excess locations
• Complete 6 major waves of renovation
• Successfully transition processes to an outsourced service provider
• Set foundation for successful rebranding of organization and longterm achievement of cutback targets

“Taurus Project Consulting worked on the most critical integration effort that we executed in the U.S. Their leadership, creative efforts and outstanding results set the U.S. real estate team up for success. Anyone, who hires Taurus Project Consulting to provide services will have made one of the best business decisions in years. Outstanding - and will hire them again for our next major effort.”

Gerry Guidice – Head of US Real Estate

Reduce Process Cycle Time

"Large financial institution reduces HR compensation process time from 60 to 14 business days."

Challenge
A major financial institution had identified an HR compensation process that was highly inefficient. The semi-annual reconciliation process was taking a full three months to complete and had levels of error not acceptable to management. This is turn, was causing major delays in other downstream processes upon which it was dependent. It was a costly problem that needed to be resolved immediately as part of a larger process improvement project. Enter Taurus.

Solution
Taurus facilitated a cross-functional project mapping workshop and led issue resolution discussions. Through these discussions, they discovered major gaps in communication: One group had no visibility in terms of what the other was doing. They also discovered the root problem: Though the Business Units were accountable for reconciling their finances, that functionality was being passed to Corporate HR. In addition, the report that the Business Units was using was provided only in hard copy form. For these reasons, the Business Units could not do the necessary calculations and analysis to properly perform the reconciliation.

Taurus mapped out clear processes and set up a password protected spreadsheet that Corporate HR could send the Business Units. This enabled them to conduct the analysis they required. In addition, they shifted the responsibility for explaining the discrepancies from Corporate HR to Corporate Finance and HR Management, where the required information resides. Finally, they directed Corporate HR to revamp their procedures and send out a full set of soft copy data to all departments for immediate efficiency improvements.

Results
Taurus helped this company cut HR compensation process time by 77% - from 60 to 14 days.

"HR department outsources key compensation processes - on time and on budget"

Challenge
A multi-national organization needed to outsource the administration of several compensation programs.  In order to do this, they needed a detailed current state process assessment.  Unfortunately, the consulting company initially selected did not deliver to expectation. That relationship was terminated.  Taurus was then contacted to bring the project back on schedule.

Solution
Taurus looked at process maps developed by the previous consultant. They were somewhat unintelligible, and it was also apparent that the previous consultant did not work collaboratively with the team. To correct this, Taurus worked hard to ensure proactive communications and expectations management. They provided:

• Formal and clear status updates, delivered regularly to all stakeholders
• Aggressive project plans to clearly lay out an approach
• Clear communications to ensure all stakeholders were on the same page and moving at the same pace
• Information for 13 sets of administration processes which enabled detailed requirements definition for the outside service provider

Even though the timing was critical, they did not compromise the work required to develop accurate process information.  Each process had multiple iterations of interviews and meetings to ensure all information was validated and cross-functional requirements were addressed.

Results
The company was finally successful in outsourcing administration processes – on time and on budget – and thereby reduced costs and previous compensation inefficiencies.