Ultra is a specialist electrical and electronics engineering company operating mainly in defence and other highly regulated markets. With a staff of around 4,500 working across the UK, North America and Australia, Ultra focuses on providing mission-specific bespoke solutions and capabilities with an annual revenue of £850M. To support future growth and continue Ultra’s positive market trajectory, key leaders worked together to create an inspiring new corporate strategy.
Eakin is a family-owned medical device and healthcare business, which employs around 1000 people across three main sites and supplies its products to over 50 countries worldwide. Founded in 1973 and family-run for two generations, Eakin needed to review its organisation design to support its long-term strategy and the next phase of growth, which is where we came in. A major part of Eakin’s evolution was shifting from being ‘family-operated’ to ‘family-owned’.
The Department was responsible for planning and delivering a challenging programme of services and infrastructure. With a growing focus on net zero and a levelling up agenda, as well as other strategic priorities, the executive team needed help to work as a collective, so they could handle the demands for rapid short and medium term delivery while realising long-term goals for the country. Metalogue partnered with the executive team, helping them to reconcile the tensions inherent in creating a sustainable strategy alongside operational delivery.
Highly successful in its sector and portfolio, Astorg is a private equity firm that specialises in investing in niche B2B global businesses. With international growth happening so rapidly and the hiring of lots of new people taking place, Astorg knew they were on the cusp of a cultural evolution. But they wanted to make sure it happened in a way that nurtured the culture everyone had come to love. Astorg’s culture was (and still is) hugely valued by both its leaders and employees. To this day, it supports the uniqueness of the company’s proposition to clients and is a source of advantage in attracting talent in a competitive market.
A family-owned automotive parts manufacturer based in Southern Germany, this manufacturer is a global technology leader in filtration with over eight decades of experience and teams working at over 80 sites worldwide. When electric vehicles disrupted the marketplace, they came up with an ambitious new strategy to support the next phase of growth. But they needed help engaging and energising 500 leaders from across the globe. Developed as a response to the marketplace shift to electric vehicles, this company’s new strategy demanded collective leadership across its business units and functions.
Brittany Ferries was originally founded in 1973 to transport onions from France to the UK. Today, it’s a successful travel and tourism business that carries passengers and freight between Spain, France, the UK and Ireland. A household name, Brittany Ferries is a firm favourite with families and freight companies as it offers affordable connections to the West Atlantic Coast. But with a large and dispersed commercial team, the lack of clarity around accountability and decision making was affecting internal structures, performance and the wider success of the company.
Metalogue worked with an electronics manufacturer with major operations in the UK, US, Australia, and Canada to help it develop an integrated software development function.
The function needed to play into their overall strategic long game and position the organisation as a leader in delivering effective solutions while staying ahead of the curve in the world of technology. Historically, the business was structured as lots of small, independent operating units with little coordination or shared functional capability. As part of a major overall redesign (which Metalogue also supported), we worked closely with the team to introduce a matrixed divisional structure, which allowed for more sharing, integration and parenting advantage.
With expertise in neuroscience and oncology, our client is a global biopharmaceutical company that develops life-changing medicines for people with serious diseases, so they can live their lives more fully. Following a significant acquisition, there was recognition of the need to develop a broad-based portfolio of early stage R&D projects to secure future growth. In the past, the focus had been on late stage R&D and the acquisition and commercialisation of promising molecules. However following the acquisition of a complementary business, a clear and ambitious strategy for growth was presented to the markets.
With its headquarters in France, Nexans is a designer and manufacturer of cable systems and services for electrification, operating in 42 countries and employing about 26,000 people around the world.
We worked alongside the internal OD and HR team to help them embed the organisation’s strategy and translate this into meaningful new behaviours across their diverse workforce. With over 100 years of history, Nexans was keen to make a strategic shift from being a generalist cable manufacturer to being a focused solutions provider in the electrification market, playing a key role in energy transition.
Our client is an international shipping business, with business units in Europe, Asia and South America.
As part of a strategic shift towards providing more cohesive digital services to its customers, they wanted to integrate several independent operating units and brands. We helped them establish a new organisation design, while supporting a change in mindset as their business went from transactional to one focused on building lasting connections.
In recent years, the supply chain division of Deutsche Post DHL Group had acquired three leading legacy businesses: printing and logistics management business Williams Lea, print media supplier HMSO, and design and production agency Tag. We were commissioned to help the executive team strategically navigate the merge into one integrated entity. Working the executive board and extended leadership teams of a subsidiary within the Deutsche Post DHL Group, we helped them develop a new strategic focus and to transition to a single, integrated entity that represented the various legacy businesses the group had acquired over time.
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