At Deloitte, we look to support growth in all of our clients. As part of a broader programme to improve its profitability we worked alongside the industrial group Sulzer, supporting their global finance transformation project. The programme aimed to deliver double-digit productivity improvement, by better leveraging scale to close the gap with other best-in-class organisations.

Our role as primary advisor to Sulzer offered us the opportunity to be part of this project from start to finish – helping to define strategy and the new operating model, as well as planning and implementing its execution. To maximize its impact, the project was designed around three phases. First, we worked with Sulzer to identify the right external partner to outsource core transactional processes, enabling world-class efficiency in the finance services organisation. We then gave support in defining a regional clusters concept, based on a new financial operating model, which brings together common functions into regional centres of excellence, allowing the business to be served more effectively. Finally, we helped in developing a training concept (Sulzer Finance Academy) designed to further both technical and soft skills within the finance organisation.

It was critical that this transformation project would provide lasting benefits to the business. Therefore, with our support, Sulzer carried out the implementation in phases, focusing on one continent at a time (America, Europe, Asia). Together, we also made sure that local finance managers and staff involved with the standardised finance processes were fully equipped through common governance and guidelines.

As a result of this global finance transformation, Sulzer has improved process standardisation and effectiveness, and achieved important cost savings throughout the organisation.

“Deloitte has played an important part in the success of this project. The team quickly understood our situation and supported us in developing and implementing this strategic finance transformation programme.”

Thomas Dittrich, CFO, Sulzer Ltd.

Syngenta is a global Swiss agribusiness that markets seeds and agrochemicals. In a difficult industry environment, the Syngenta Executive launched a productivity and cost savings campaign called AOL (Accelerated Operational Leverage) in order to increase the company’s margins and help counter the downturn. Deloitte was chosen to support Syngenta in developing and implementing the strategy for the commercial function and in further developing operational excellence capabilities.

The programme targeted an improvement in EBITDA margin through annualized efficiency gains of around $1 billion in 2018, to be achieved across all functions. Measures included simplification of market operations and margin improvement through sales force productivity. Deloitte teams proactively drove implementation across all AOL focus areas and continued to accompany Syngenta to drive a successful change in management approach within its organisation. Over the first year, all components of the AOL programme were on target.

"Deloitte has created a new capability in Operational Excellence which will allow Syngenta to sustain all the business transformation changes. Deloitte defined new capabilities in the Sales Strategy and Operations areas, developing and implementing new technologies with SFDC providing a better customer experience through better ways of working for the sales operations staff. Deloitte has also brought an outside-in perspective on how other companies make transformational change happen and challenged us on how we believe we will make the solutions sustainable in the different geographies"

Jorge Lopez, Global Program Manager and Commercial Transformation Lead, Syngenta AG