Structuring processes to improve organizational performance

Context

Throughout several roles in organizations specializing in IT infrastructure, Cloud, and managed services, I repeatedly encountered the same organizational challenge.

​

Sales, Pre-sales, and Delivery teams had gradually developed their own ways of working. While this approach supported day-to-day operations, it became increasingly difficult to sustain as the business grew. In my own role alone, I managed 70 to 80 opportunities per year, representing approximately 30% of the company's pre-sales pipeline. The team consisted of only three to four Pre-sales Engineers, each managing their own portfolio.

​

As new employees joined and collaboration became more complex, individual practices diverged. There was no guarantee that two customers would experience the same sales journey, depending on who handled the opportunity.

Seeing this pattern across multiple organizations convinced me that this was not a company-specific issue, but a broader challenge of organizational maturity.

​

The challenge

As a Pre-sales Engineer, I worked daily with Sales, Contract Management, Procurement, Project Management, and Delivery, six functions contributing to the same end-to-end customer journey, yet operating without a shared framework.

​

The same issues repeatedly emerged: information was scattered, responsibilities were not always clearly defined, and onboarding relied heavily on informal knowledge transfer. It often took several months before new team members became fully autonomous, while the pace of business required rapid execution.

​

The challenge was not to produce more documentation, but to design a common operating framework capable of standardizing ways of working without reducing the agility of the business.

​

My approach

Although process improvement was outside my formal responsibilities, I proposed launching a business process mapping and standardization initiative.

​

Once approved, I assembled a cross-functional team representing the entire sales-to-delivery value chain and led the initiative over a five-month period, facilitating workshops every two weeks to analyse existing practices, identify operational bottlenecks, assign improvement actions, and consolidate recommendations.

Together, we mapped the end-to-end value chain, clarified roles and responsibilities, and designed a common operating framework covering the complete customer lifecycle, from opportunity qualification to project delivery and invoicing.

​

The initiative resulted in eight formally documented business processes, supported by workflow diagrams defining ownership, inputs, outputs, and associated operating procedures. Continuous improvement mechanisms were embedded directly into the processes, including systematic reviews of lost opportunities.

​

Several years later, I applied the same methodology within a second organization, where the processes were integrated directly into operational tools. One example was the design of an end-to-end costing tool in which every function contributed its own data only once, allowing information to flow automatically through to the final financial summary.

​

Results

The initiative standardized ways of working across teams, clarified responsibilities, and significantly improved information flow throughout the sales-to-delivery lifecycle.

​

Within my own portfolio, I managed approximately 150 opportunities over two years, achieving a 75% win rate.

The newly established process framework accelerated onboarding for new employees and became a key component of the organization's ISO 27001 certification preparation. The auditors specifically recognized the maturity and level of structure of the documented processes.

​

Applying the same methodology in a second organization confirmed its scalability and adaptability. Over one year, I supported 92 opportunities, achieved an approximate 70% win rate on completed bids, and contributed to €813K of won business, 78% of which was recurring revenue.

​

What this experience enables me to bring to organizations today

This experience fundamentally shaped the way I approach organizational transformation.

​

Before recommending change, I seek to understand how an organization truly operates, how functions interact, and where operational friction originates. My experience has shown that performance issues rarely stem from people themselves. More often, they result from fragmented processes, unclear ownership, or ineffective knowledge sharing.

​

Today, I apply this same approach to help organizations design operating models that are simple, scalable, and aligned with business growth, creating shared ways of working that improve execution without sacrificing flexibility.