Meron Adametegn

Global Operations Consolidation

FinServe Group

Consolidated 14 regional back-office operations into 3 shared-service hubs.

Problem

A decade of acquisitions had left FinServe running 14 independent regional back offices, each with its own finance, HR and operations stack. Costs were duplicated across every market and customer service was inconsistent from one region to the next.

Context

FinServe had grown almost entirely by acquisition, and no two regions had ever been asked to run on a shared standard. The board had tried to fix this twice before with technology-led projects that stalled once they hit local resistance.

Role

Engaged as interim Chief Transformation Officer, reporting directly to the Group CEO and the Board Transformation Committee, with full authority over sequencing and the consolidation budget.

Process

Ran a 6-week diagnostic across all 14 markets, designed a 3-hub shared-service model, then sequenced the migration by risk rather than by size — moving the lowest-risk market first to prove the model before touching the largest, most complex one.

Key Decisions

Chose an 18-month phased migration over the 9-month plan the board initially wanted, after the first-market pilot showed service quality dipping under a compressed timeline. Also decided to keep regional relationship managers local while centralizing only back-office processing, rather than centralizing the client-facing role too.

Outcome

Reduced annual operating cost by 22%, cut month-end close from 11 days to 4, and held customer satisfaction scores flat throughout the transition — the metric the board was most worried about losing.

Reflection

The nine-month plan looked bolder on a board slide, but the eighteen-month phased plan is the one that actually shipped without a service failure any customer would have noticed. Speed that breaks the thing you're protecting isn't speed.