Dr. Russell F. Henke -- Business Consultant
Case #9 -- Understanding European Preferences
A large and mature software vendor has achieved worldwide presence over many years, including strong and stable revenues from valued customers in Europe. However, revenues in Europe begin flattening and the vendor’s Euromanagers are campaigning for software enhancements tailored to unique European needs. The Euromanagers become disgruntled as they observe the vendor’s USA headquarters to be more and more unresponsive. Further frustration occurs as they feel that USA headquarters is too consumed with its own issues to even listen to Europe’s needs. Attrition of valuable Euro personnel increases.
The situation becomes critical when the vendor’s European Managing Director leaves the company. The USA-based CEO decides to re-organize Europe by establishing individual business units within each European country and encouraging USA-like entrepreneurial behavior, with no central managing director for Europe. Unfortunately, the situation deteriorates further.
An experienced outside business consultant is asked to help. The consultant immediately travels to Europe
and meets one-on-one and then together with all the Euromanagers. It becomes clear that virtually all the Euromanagers are entrepreneurially-inexperienced and further, the Euromanagers have little interest in becoming entrepreneurial. Further, the various countries are heavily dependent on one another and need to interchange people and business prospects easily among themselves. This need will only increase as the European Union inevitably proceeds and multinational customers prevail.
The consultant becomes a temporary liaison between Europe and the vendor’s USA headquarters, restoring Euro-confidence and credibility and driving Euro product needs into the US R&D agenda. He then recommends that a single European Managing Director be re-established and suggests several candidates from inside the existing European group. One of the candidates is selected and installed, and the vendor’s overall European business performance is soon restored and the employee base stabilized.
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This page was last updated on December 29, 2008