Rebalancing costs and income for a leading German leasing provider

How we helped

• Financial Services

The Challenge

Our approach

Using our Quick Strike rapid diagnostic, we combined speed with rigor to generate clear business cases for more than 130 measures across four core areas: business functions, overhead functions, indirect spend and transformation assessment, using degree of implementation (DOI) maturity evaluation to secure the benefits of change.

Our four-phase execution covered baselining, hypothesis development, measure development, and prioritization and planning. This leveraged industry expertise, benchmarks and best practice to formulate transparent hypotheses, validated in deep-dive sessions. 

The measures we developed balanced client alignment with constructive challenge for concrete specifications at the right financial magnitude and complexity level. 

Our implementation focus and high degree of risk transparency generated detailed roadmaps prioritizing actions, generated practical risk mitigation strategies, and established a robust governance structure for execution tracking.

Key optimization levers included digital and technology solutions, organizational optimization, IT and infrastructure, process improvements, and procurement and spend management. These included reducing manual activities in the core leasing process, consolidating the management layer, eliminating redundant activities, reducing IT vendors through standardization, developing a roadmap for data center decommissioning and cloud transformation, simplifying reporting and expanding self-service capabilities, as well as bundling volumes and running tenders to generate savings in supplier renegotiations.

Outcomes and impact

In total, the identified measures generated €20 million in annualized savings. Personnel cost savings totaled €11.6 million, equivalent to a 23% reduction in FTEs, while operating costs fell by 20% to €8.4 million through new supplier agreements and demand management initiatives for discretionary spend. Management structure optimization generated a €1.1 million benefit. End-to-end digital processing and servicing of the core leasing business led to savings of €1.8 million. AI-supported credit processing generated savings of €0.8 million. Standardization, automation, and migration to SaaS delivered €2.1 million in benefits through the improved IT operating model.

The total one-time cost of the measures amounted to approximately 50% of the 2027 financial year savings of €20 million, with €5.7 million saved within 12 months of implementation in 2026. 

An implementation roadmap set out the five key areas needed to deliver this impact over nine weeks:

• HR: Planning and implementation of workforce measures, including negotiations
• Program management: Steering implementation through target-state definition, roadmap development, and management reporting
• IT: Developing the target state for cloud migration, optimizing the application portfolio, and improving license management
• AI: Identifying concrete use cases in customer service, email, and document processes
• Procurement: Prioritizing strategic suppliers and implementing differentiated negotiation approaches

A three-tier governance structure ensured all measures delivered on their targets without excessive time or resource eaten up. This included monthly CEO reporting, program management leads for measure coordination, financial realization and FTE reductions, and senior sponsors taking on operational accountability, including detailed progress reporting.

The business met its strategic imperatives, with savings exceeding objectives and a sustainable cost structure created with the ability to pursue continuous optimization.