Case Study
Client: Alexander Technologies Europe Ltd (‘ATEL’)
Industry: Manufacturing of Battery Packs
Project Title: Interim COO through period of unprecedented growth
Disciplines: Interim Leadership
The challenge and objective
In March 2020, ATEL had just closed out the FY2019 with revenues of around £13M and a team on site in NE England of approximately 40 fte. By June that year, fuelled by the COVID-19 pandemic, demand for the battery packs produced by ATEL was forecast to increase revenues to around £45M and recruitment and training was underway to grow the workforce to over 350 fte to meet this demand.
ATEL had specified and built a new manufacturing facility with all new equipment and optimised production layouts in order to meet this demand and future growth aspirations.
What ATEL did not have was the leadership, management infrastructure, or operational governance processes necessary to sustain these increased volumes. In addition, although future growth was an aspiration, ATEL did not have the strategic clarity, business development focus or project engineering capacity to deliver any growth in a controlled way.
The solution delivered
- Delivered against the peak demand during the COVID-19 pandemic
- Sustained YOY growth of c.70% from pre-pandemic levels
- Achieved this whilst improving OTD (from c.60% to >96% sustained), productivity (from c.45% to >80% sustained) and scrap/quarantine rate (from 11% to <0.7% sustained)
- Refreshed, equipped and coached a leadership and management team capable of delivering and evolving the growth strategy in all areas of the business
- Installed the governance processes to manage strategy deployment and daily performance of all areas of the business
- Created a sales pipeline of approximately 3x 2023 revenue target and growing
In recognition of the transformation achieved during this period, ATEL was awarded Ward Hadaway’s coveted Fastest Growing North East Business Award in the large business category.
People featured (left to right): James Aherne (Prodelex), Claire Brymer (FD), Mark Rutherford (MD).
Testimonial
Mark Rutherford, Managing Director, Alexander Technologies Europe Ltd.
James was taken on as our interim COO at the beginning of a period of significant growth. In truth, the leadership team at the time didn’t have a clear vision of what was needed, only that something was needed.
James brought a level of professionalism and structure to our organisation that we had never seen before and, through leadership, coaching, mentoring and support was able to drive transformational change in all areas of the business.
It’s true to say that the success that Alexander Technologies is now so proud of is due in no small part to us having had James with us for the two years between 2020 and 2022.