Insight · Commercial transformation
Redesigning the commercial operating model
Bringing governance, data, technology and human judgement together around the decisions that create and protect value.
- Published
- Reading time
- 2 min
- Written by
- Salisu Uba, PhD, FCIPS
A representative engagement theme. No named client is described and no outcome figures are claimed.
A practical approach to transformation
This is a representative engagement theme: an illustration of NatQuest’s approach to commercial transformation, written so that a prospective client can recognise their own situation in it.
It is not a named client story, and no figures are claimed. Client outcomes require a defined baseline, delivery period and approval before they can be presented as evidence.
The situation
Commercial decisions are made in more places than the operating model admits. Sourcing sits with one team, evaluation with another, contracting with a third, supplier management somewhere else again. Each has its own evidence, its own tooling and its own idea of what “good” looks like.
The result is not incompetence. It is inconsistency: the same class of decision made differently depending on who is in the room.
The approach
Start from the decisions. We map where commercial decisions are actually made, rather than where the org chart says they are. That map, not the department structure, is the unit of redesign.
Bring the four together. Governance, data, technology and human judgement are designed around each significant decision at the same time. Define the required decision record before work begins, including who approves it and which evidence must be retained.
Make the reasoning traceable. Every recommendation stays traceable to the evidence behind it, so an evaluation can be explained to someone who was not present.
Leave the capability behind. The operating model is only redesigned once the client’s own team is running it. We work alongside your team, not instead of it.
What changes
- One class of decision, one standard, regardless of who is in the room.
- An audit trail that exists because of how the decision was made, not because someone reconstructed it afterwards.
- A named, senior point of accountability on the decisions that matter.
- A team that holds the standard after the engagement ends.
Where it applies
Most often with organisations modernising procurement and supply chain decision-making: public institutions, growth enterprises, and organisations managing risk and cost across borders.