Case Study: Aggreko

Client: Aggreko
Sector: Energy & Power
Case Study: Consulting & Executive Development
Country: UK & Worldwide

Our Client:

Our client was the leading global manufacturing company in the rental of power and temperature control. They help companies to increase profit by creating opportunities, solving problems and reducing risk using their unique network of global locations, equipment and technical services, inspiring confidence in its customers worldwide:

  • Confidence in the equipment and services they provide.
  • Confidence in the promises they make.
  • Confidence in the relationships they build. 
  • Confidence in the knowledge that they will always get the job done.

The Business Problem:

In the three years prior to 2005/2006 the European business, one of this client’s three regions, had declined tremendously in its profits becoming the poorest performing of all of the company’s territories. In 2005/2006 they were tasked within three years to take the profit up to £30 million and beyond. A new Managing Director had arrived with the ambition to reenergise, refocus and drive their entire European leadership of approximately 100 people and get them focused on delivering the vision of the company. Acosphere was consulted and asked to work with them, particularly around organising their management conference and helping them create the content.

The Strategy and Solution:

Acosphere worked with the client for 8 months in building a world-class management conference which took place in May 2006. We began by understanding the vision for the company and how that was going to be translated and deployed at the European business level, by helping them to define the processes that the Managing Director for Europe wanted to use for target setting, objective setting, stretch target setting and also goal deployment. We combined all of these elements to create a theme that was linked to their vision ‘Time for growth’.

Around that theme we helped them build a number of workshops which took place throughout the three days. We broke the time into half days to make sure that the sessions were dynamic, that the delegates remained energised and that people were completely focused on the objectives and outcomes

Results:

  • The management conference got satisfaction ratings in the upper 90 percentiles.

Furthermore, the company was totally energised by the end of the three days and the sales managers that were interviewed afterwards commented;

‘We have clarity; we know where we need to go and what we need to do, we are going to devote ourselves to it, we are going to do it.’

  • Following this management conference the client saw 2006 as a turning point for the European region and it led to a sharp increase in performance in the second half of the year.
  • By the end of 2006 the region’s revenue had grown by 18.7%, trading profit had doubled to €16 million. This momentum continued on into 2007.
  • Twelve months later the European business had a turnaround and out of the three businesses it was no longer the weaker link, but in fact operating very well. The European management conference has modestly helped our client get focused and start a complete turnaround. 
  • Acosphere continued to work with the client producing conferences for them in January 2007, January 2009 and were contracted to return to create their bi-annual conference in January 2011. 
  • During the two years following the initial successful 2006 conference, we helped the client to realise three times the profit that they had in the first year and extreme growth that lead to the promotion of the region’s Managing Director to the Managing Director of the international business – the company’s biggest region.