Importance of Flexible Global Strategy Frameworks

Environmental and industry trends continue to differ in both their incidence and level of impact across geographical markets, requiring lubricant suppliers to adopt a flexible approach to the deployment of their global downstream strategies.

So how can these companies achieve this ‘sweet spot’ between deploying relevant local strategies based on local operating conditions, whilst also securing efficiencies derived from standardisation and adherence to a defined set of global guardrails?  

This question is actually more complex when you consider it is also quite normal for each geographical market to differ in its relative competitive strength across the value chain, and also where markets are no longer following the previous trajectory of transforming from a ‘developing’ to a ‘developed’ market

Successful companies address this challenge by building a flexible global strategy framework capability, comprising of agreed policies, standardised processes and tools, which are deployed in a consistent manner at global, region and key geographical market level, thus allowing for differences and comparisons to be easily made and understood.

By applying refreshed local market, customer, competitor and internal information and insight, countries can assess the continued relevancy of its current stated strategy.

Examples of potential areas of flexibility are:

• Participation strategy
• Product technology
• Product brand portfolio
• Rout to market strategies
• Role and contribution of functions
• Prioritisation of costs and investments
• Level and shape of future performance

The benefits of this capability are seen in building a true ‘Global One Team’ culture, simplifying ways of working as well as capturing the incremental financial benefits that are readily available.

Financial Benefits

• Global portfolio of financial plans based on latest information and insight
• Maximizes profitable growth and ROI at region and country level
• Improves allocation of cost and investment to growth agendas

Benefits of Simplified Way of Working

• Easy to develop, communicate, compare and evaluate strategies at global and country level
• Aligns the role and contribution of all functions to the global portfolio of country strategies
• Enables easy sharing and application of best practice across geographical markets
• Allows for increased movement of employees across geographical markets