Preliminary Research
The most important part of restructuring lies in defining the problem and postulating the solution. It requires a careful study of all company processes and a comparison with industry norms. The first step in this process is to study relationships with customers, their product acceptance and expectations of benefits from your restructuring. Examine employee expectations and potential for damage to morale. Review all supplier and customer contracts, revenue performance, expenses and liabilities, including responsibilities to investors.
Decision Making
You can start forming decisions during your research phase because it will reveal strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats throughout your enterprise. It may also affect your understanding of the problems you seek to solve as well as change your proposed solutions. During this process, major decisions should be made, and your plan should be ready for implementation. Involving all levels of the company and outside stakeholders in your research and planning process will speed decisions and result in easier implementation.
Implementation
Implementation is the process of managing problems that arise. It involves selling the idea to all stakeholders, which include employees as well as investors, suppliers and customers. It also involves a timetable or series of action benchmarks that trigger the next steps in implementation. The first challenge is to move employees that are needed in a different function and terminate those employees no longer needed. These are sensitive tasks and should be handled as such. The next challenge is training existing employees in new procedures, software and functional tasks. Negotiation of new contracts and re-negotiation of old contracts and credit facilities should also take place during this phase.
Review
Reviewing the results of implementation and revising as needed, is imperative. To ensure the successful completion of your restructuring, it is vital to plug gaps, stick to the schedule and to reorganise false starts as quickly as they become evident. No plan is perfect, and a reorganisation plan has numerous key points that must be ready for the changeover. A restructuring that that is not professionally implemented and where the schedule does not meet the launch date, will erode employee and outside stakeholder enthusiasm and result in some aspects of the plan (even the most important ones) failing to become reality.
Having Sear Hospitality manage this process for you, is a strategic move that will help ensure the successful restructure of your business.
