Communication improvement and introduction of new reporting and communication structures within an interculturally strained business relationship with the foreign subsidiary

Transparency and control are not only based on numbers, data and facts. The subsidiary’s results were good for years – then one of the main customers broke away and the enterprise came into the focus of the parent company. One manager after the other was entrusted by the parent company with the task of understanding the subsidiary and getting it back to profit. To no avail.

Through another project, people from stepwise were entrusted to look into this issue. With an outside view, the task was to analyze the situation and create transparency, to evaluate the situation of the company and to take action. The key factor in this situation was not so much the technical, procedural aspect but the intercultural, interpersonal relationship. Understanding why the cooperation does not work, in order to then work together on solutions for optimization and reorientation.

A reporting system was designed and implemented which supported the local company in its decisions and provided important information while meeting the requirements of the parent company. For this purpose different sources of information of local ERP software and consolidation information were developed into a prototype with the help of MS Office, which should find its way into a BI tool in the next step. The keyword was “Together”. Taking the time to understand what is important to other stakeholders and cultures in the collaboration. From these insights, the collaboration was subsequently strengthened and the overall performance of the group increased.