Accomplishing change together

The transition to ONEGLOBE at KWS Türk is almost complete. The experience has been a largely positive one. And where things aren’t working smoothly, the team can take away valuable lessons learned for all upcoming transitions.

The thermometer in Eskişehir, Turkey, shows 38 degrees Celsius. It’s late August. It feels even warmer in KWS Türk’s production site on the outskirts of the city, where the sugarbeet seed production plant has already been running at full speed 24 hours a day for more than two months.

Production Manager Basri Şanli smiles and emphasizes that the team has doubled production in the past five years. “With the support of ONEGLOBE, we hope to maintain such growth rates moving ahead,” he adds.

Transition to ONEGLOBE from May 2018 to April 2019

KWS Türk was one of the first ten KWS companies to start transitioning to ONEGLOBE. Starting in May 2018, local management, together with the ONEGLOBE organization and the Transition Team, first analyzed the various local administration processes precisely – from HR management to finance and tax.

In the subsequent months, ONEGLOBE colleagues took over many of these processes so that Eskişehir could boost its operational capacities and focus on its core business, namely producing and selling corn and sugarbeet seed. Since the actual switchover to ONEGLOBE on April 1, 2019, many administrative processes for Turkey are now handled by the Global Transaction Center (GTC) in Berlin.

Mustafa Balta: More time for what counts

Looking back at the 15-month transition, Mustafa Balta, Country Manager Corn, sums up that the change process “was bigger and more challenging than many colleagues had initially anticipated.” However, he believes the results speak clearly: “Our administration is more professional and less time-consuming. I, for example, feel optimistic that I’ll spend less time in the future with finance and controlling tasks.”

Aytuğ Sofuoğlu: Importance of the Transition Lead

Aytuğ Sofuoğlu, Country Manager Sugarbeet, adds that “constant and open communication was the key to successful transition in Turkey. It was important that we could rely on a Transition Lead who continuously communicated and mediated between the local team and Berlin.”

Before the switchover to ONEGLOBE, two local colleagues were responsible for most administrative tasks for Turkey – processes that will largely be handled by the GTC in Berlin in the future. Unfortunately, both colleagues declined the offer of a job at the GTC, which would have involved moving to Berlin, for personal reasons. After they had familiarized colleagues with KWS Türk’s processes, both of them left the company.

New operational business structure

Alongside the transition to ONEGLOBE, the two Country Managers also took the opportunity to reorganize their operational business structure and initiated a restructuring of work packages and responsibilities.

One useful lesson from Turkey in this connection was to appoint a local colleague as key contact person in the first months after transition. Ceyla Karadeniz, who is now Business Support Coordinator, supported the two Country Managers in interacting with local authorities and in coordinating dialogue between Eskişehir and Berlin.

System still in trial mode

However, an honest analysis of the current situation also reveals that not everything is going smoothly with the new way of working. Damla Kaynak, Business Partner HR for Turkey, stresses that the entire system is still in trial mode. “Not all the processes and responsibilities are completely fine-tuned. ONEGLOBE is now getting to know the special challenges of Turkish law and business requirements in practice. And our local colleagues still sometimes have problems understanding who they can contact about a particular subject. Language barriers sometimes also prevent colleagues in Turkey from interacting with the GTC. It’s a learning process for all of us.”

Production Manager Basri Şanli adds: “Some processes aren’t yet as fast and reliable as we would like. On the finance and controlling side, for example, we still have a lot of work processing and tracking invoices. Teamwork is needed to solve such challenges in a newly created structure.”

Learning effect for upcoming transitions

Such lessons learned from the first, now almost complete transitions will enable the Transition Team to improve upcoming rollouts of ONEGLOBE. While his team is currently initiating the first transitions in Eastern Europe (see the info graphic), Christoph Hengst, Head of Transition Management, emphasizes that “ONEGLOBE is naturally learning a lot and getting attuned as a team at the moment. We’ll adopt a more flexible timeline for rollout in the future and focus on smoother transfer of knowledge and responsibilities. We’re endeavoring, for instance, to bring together local colleagues and those in Berlin at an earlier stage so as to ensure a better dialogue. However, we’re also preparing the Business Partners better for their role as change agents, i.e. for their task as experts who can respond constructively and correctly in situations where decisions need to be taken or there are conflicts – so that every transition ends up being as successful as that in Turkey.” |