Outcomes
Eight of the ten targeted site closures were delivered within six months of the programme going live — ahead of schedule and with a clear, repeatable process and governance framework established for the remaining closures. Not a single site closure resulted in disruption to sales or client deliveries. The asset disposal programme achieved a 127% value recovery rate against the business case — significantly exceeding expectations. By the end of the engagement, all progress tracking had been embedded into the client’s business-as-usual operational management processes and financial benefit tracking integrated into standard financial reporting — leaving no dependency on external support.
Background
The scale and pace of the ambition created immediate complexity. Multiple enabling workstreams — covering HR and redundancies, infrastructure, and property — were operating independently, without the central coordination needed to sequence activities effectively or manage interdependencies. Regional management teams, accustomed to operating with a high degree of autonomy and protective of their local P&Ls, were resistant to the kind of centralised programme governance the transformation required.
Without a coherent, integrated plan pulling the workstreams together, the risk was clear: activities would proceed in the wrong sequence, disrupting the business’s ability to fulfil client deliveries, and the financial benefits of the programme would fail to materialise within the year.
Curzon Approach
Curzon’s first task was to create order from fragmentation — aligning the independently developed functional workstreams into a single, coherent programme before a single site closure had taken place. Pre-launch alignment was treated as a non-negotiable foundation: without it, even the best execution would have been undermined by sequencing conflicts and unmanaged interdependencies.
A clear geographical sequencing logic was developed for the programme rollout — ensuring that the capacity to fulfil client deliveries was maintained throughout, and that site closures were executed in an order that minimised commercial and operational risk. An integrated programme management framework with a clear delivery drumbeat was established to coordinate and manage the multiple workstreams, supported by programme reporting covering both operational and progress metrics at workstream and programme level.
Regional management teams — initially resistant — were actively brought into the implementation, transforming potential blockers into programme contributors. The asset disposal programme was structured with mechanisms to maximise secondary market value, ultimately delivering the 127% value recovery that significantly exceeded the original business case.
Throughout, the design principle was self-sufficiency: every governance mechanism, tracking process, and reporting framework was built to operate within the client’s existing management and reporting infrastructure — ensuring the programme’s gains would be owned and sustained by the business long after Curzon’s involvement ended.
