Turnaround and
divestment.

The mandate

I joined Mono Solutions with three objectives: reverse a negative sales trend, bring a loss-making business to profitability and lead the company through a successful divestment.

The objectives were clear. Delivering them required changes across much of the business, with adjustments continuing throughout my time there.

The challenge

Improving sales was essential, but the work went well beyond the sales organisation.

The commercial setup, account management, customer support, technology and platform development all needed attention. The product roadmap and documentation of the solution platform required a thorough clean-up.

We also needed firmer priorities: what mattered most, where to concentrate resources and what would have to wait.

Alongside these changes, the company had to continue serving customers and running its day-to-day operations while the divestment progressed.

What I did

I led a revamp of the commercial and operational setup, adapting the organisation and the focus of our efforts as the assignment progressed.

The work covered four connected areas:

• Sales and account management: Reshaping the commercial setup to address declining sales and strengthen the management of customer relationships.
• Support, technology and platform development: Adapting these functions alongside the commercial changes, recognising the dependencies between what the business sold, supported and developed.
• Roadmap and documentation: Cleaning up the product roadmap and solution-platform documentation to create a clearer basis for planning and execution.
• Priorities and resources: Making explicit choices about where to focus effort, what the organisation could realistically deliver and what needed to be deferred.

These were decisions we had to keep revisiting. Some changes needed time to work; others needed adjusting. My responsibility was to maintain direction while responding to what the business needed.

Leading the divestment

In parallel with the turnaround, I led the company through a complex divestment process.

The transaction required sustained management attention while the operating changes were still underway. Both needed to move forward. Customers still needed to be served, people needed direction and the business needed to keep improving as the sale progressed.

The timing matters. Profitability was the result of work carried out throughout the assignment, including continued adjustments to the organisation, its activities and its priorities.

What stayed with me was the breadth of the work behind that result. A mandate to improve sales and profitability took us into support, technology, development, documentation and the roadmap. Those areas had to be considered together.

That is what sits behind the brief phrase “led a turnaround and divestment” on a CV.