Renowned Window Manufacturer in Middle Europe - Executive Coaching

The renowned manufacturer of windows and related building goods is known as a high-quality innovator in his industry in middle Europe. He has grown out of a specialized craft business and now produces highly automated at scale.

Optimized and standardized business processes that rely on solid and future-proof IT systems are a critical success factor in this business. The wealth of variants for windows and related building goods is one of the most significant drivers of complexity. Corporate IT must develop according to the business growth and needs to proactively cope with the increased complexity in business processes, IT architecture, and organization.

Challenges and opportunities in IT organization, IT governance, and in particular, the introduction of a new product and production management system are ahead.

The goal of the project was to coach the IT executive on strategic options to develop their IT organization, considering the following key points in particular:

• Understand and discuss the overall corporate development and the corporate strategy
• Assess and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the current IT organization in contrast to the growth of the business and industry best practices
• Develop strategic options to bring the IT organization to the next level, including aspects of centralization, decentralization, business-IT-alignment, IT sourcing, and IT leadership development
• Consider the identified challenges and opportunities in IT organization, IT governance, and in particular, the introduction of a new product and production management system

The following approach has been taken to develop the new IT strategy and a corresponding target IT operating model:

• Settings session with the CIO
• Walkthrough with the CIO and analysis of the existing IT strategy and key documents
• Workshop to walkthrough and discuss the As-Is evaluation results
• Co-creation workshop on strategic options to develop the IT organization

The project length for coaching the IT executive on his particular matters was approximately 4 weeks.