From Complexity to Clarity: Commercial Org Redesign & SG&A Rightsizing at a Listed Specialty Chemicals Group

Strategic clarity
TTE Strategy worked as a fully dedicated team directly with the client’s Strategy Team and COO, with decisions reviewed and aligned closely throughout the engagement. Following core elements of the CLEAR framework, the project started by establishing a shared, fact-based understanding of the true SG&A baseline and the gap to the shareholder target, creating alignment on ambition and action areas before moving into design. Based on this foundation, concrete savings targets were defined per business unit, total SG&A was benchmarked outside-in against a selected peer group, and a bottom-up saving-lever framework was developed. 

Execution that sticks
The engagement was designed for immediate P&L impact and implementation readiness. The bottom-up saving-lever framework created the operational foundation for a full SG&A transformation program and ensured that identified measures can be translated into concrete implementation initiatives across the organization. 
At production-site level, the same execution-oriented logic was applied: the current setup was jointly assessed with the site lead, a target blueprint was co-developed, and a validation-ready roadmap was derived to support implementation. 

Co-Creation for real buy-in
Throughout the commercial organization redesign, the project followed strong Co-Creation principles. In close, iterative sessions with commercial leads across all four units, existing structures, FTE allocations, and organizational interfaces were challenged while simultaneously building ownership for the target design. The same collaborative approach guided the work at production-site level, ensuring alignment between strategic ambition and operational realities. 
The result was not a top-down recommendation, but a jointly developed, implementation-ready solution with clear ownership anchored across all relevant levels of the organization. 

The outcome was driven by three main achievements: 

On SG&A, the engagement established a transparent addressable baseline, quantified the savings requirement across different case scenarios, allocated targets to business units, and equipped leadership with a bottom-up saving-lever framework ready for Phase 2 execution. 

Within the commercial organization, cost savings of 30-40% were achieved across four business units, with structural ambiguity eliminated through clear roles, interfaces and governance. A full implementation-ready handover package (transfer matrices, job descriptions, org charts) enable the client to execute from Day 1. 

On the main production site, a target org blueprint was developed including savings levers and an AI/automation enablement concept, creating a foundation for future efficiency and scalability.

The engagement was driven by a fully dedicated TTE Strategy team working in close partnership with the client’s Strategy Team and COO. Commercial leads across all four units were actively involved throughout the org design process, ensuring structural decisions were grounded in operational reality and carried clear ownership from the start. For the production site workstream, the site lead served as the key collaboration partner in diagnosing the current setup and co-developing the target blueprint. 

Ownership was not transferred at the end, it was built throughout. Every key decision and design choice was co-created with the relevant stakeholders: Strategy Team and Board on ambition and targets, commercial leads on org design, HR on job descriptions and implementation logic, and the site lead on the production site blueprint. This ensured that nothing landed as a top-down recommendation, but as a jointly developed solution that stakeholders had shaped and could stand behind.