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Lean Management in Sales at Multinational

Søren Pommer
By
Last updated on 05/06/2025

When customers start demanding solutions and services rather than mass-produced products, then this requires new organisational competencies and processes. See how a Process Community™ can support the implementation of new processes in a manufacturing company.

A manufacturer that sees an increase in demand from complex, project-driven solutions and service has to change its ways of working for most of its customer-facing processes.

This example is based on a real-life scenario of a multinational manufacturing with a business challenge that a Process Community™ can help to resolve.

Situation

A European manufacturing company with more than 20.000 employees that service in excess of 50 national markets has seen a gradual change in demand from most industries it serves. Ten years ago the company sold standardised technology products via distributors in all markets. During the last decade, demand has shifted towards more complex solutions for e.g. factories and processing plants. This required the introduction of a range of new overall business processes:

As a consequence of this, the company set up a number of Business Excellence teams in their global HQ. Each Business Excellence team was given the assignment of introducing new processes and raise the local competence level.

The challenge was significant since local employees had been selling and servicing distributors for decades. Now they had to change and be capable of servicing customers directly and in more complex settings. They had to change from selling and servicing products to selling and servicing solutions.

Challenge

The Business Excellence teams had developed new business processes, roles & responsibilities, work guides, implemented a new CRM system and produced numerous leaflets and instructions. Following this local sales and support personnel had been trained and supported to adopt the new business processes.

After three years of work, there was only a limited amount of adoption for the new business processes. It was unclear to the Business Excellence teams what the primary reasons were. Was it…

Having tried many options it was unclear how to break the gridlock and encourage the transition to progress.

Solution

This scenario can be supported by deploying a Process Community™. It can do this by complementing the existing effort in the following ways:

If you are in a similar situation then why not contact us for an informal talk about problems and solutions?

We offer a short, focused 30-hour consulting engagement on assessing your situation and providing actionable recommendations for increasing your initiative’s effect on people’s behaviours. See more here.

About the Author

Gluu CEO Søren Pommer

LinkedIn Profile

Søren Pommer is the founder and CEO of Gluu, a Copenhagen-based company dedicated to streamlining business processes for organizations worldwide. Drawing from his experience managing global digital projects at Philips and later as COO of a digital agency, Søren identified the challenges businesses face in aligning process management with practical execution. This inspired him to establish Gluu in 2011. Under Søren's leadership, Gluu has become a leading platform for improving process transparency, collaboration, and compliance in nearly 60 countries. His vision focuses on empowering employees by creating tools that simplify understanding, execution, and enhancement of work processes, ensuring that systems adapt to human needs rather than the other way around. Søren’s approach emphasizes involvement, usability, and the seamless integration of processes to bridge organizational silos. Søren is a thought leader in process management and advocates for rethinking traditional top-down governance to make work more intuitive and effective for everyone involved

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