Case 04 / Scaling Strategy
One model for many operating companies, without levelling them
A group-wide blueprint for retail media — central standards where they create scale, local freedom where it enables business.
- Role
- Head of Product Retail
- Context
- International retail group with several operating companies
- Reading time
- 3 minutes
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Executive Summary
01 / 07The management question was never whether every unit gets the same solution, but which elements are mandatory and where local flexibility is commercially sensible.
The situation
02 / 07Central building blocks. Very different starting points.
Within a large retail group, the technical, data-related and organisational experience from existing retail media implementations was to be made usable for further operating companies.
The starting point combined central platform building blocks with very different local conditions: different commercialisation logics, different maturity levels, different market conditions. What had worked in one company was either oversized or underspecified elsewhere.
Central
- Platform building blocks
Locally different
- Commercialisation logic
- Maturity
- Market conditions
= oversized in one place, underspecified in another
The real problem & My mandate
03 / 07Not the same solution for everyone – but the question of what must be standardised.
The obvious question — does every unit get the same solution? — is the wrong one. It permits only two answers, and both are bad.
The right question is: which elements have to be standardised, and where is local flexibility commercially sensible? Without a blueprint every company redefines technical foundations, master data, processes and roles — expensive and slow. Too much centralisation, on the other hand, ignores local market realities and produces a model that is formally adopted and practically circumvented.
No blueprint
Expensive and slow
Too much centralisation
Adopted formally, bypassed in practice
My mandate
Structure a group blueprint that translates platform, data, operating model and commercialisation options into an understandable scaling logic — written so that a smaller operating company can read it and find its own entry point in it.
Approach
04 / 07One core, many entry points
- A
Identify the common core
Inventory structure, unique IDs, location data, roles and reporting principles were set as the group-wide base. This selection is the central decision of the entire effort: everything included becomes mandatory for every unit — and everything left out can hardly be unified retroactively.
Group-wide core
- Inventory structure
- Unique IDs
- Location data
- Roles
- Reporting principles
- B
Enable maturity-based growth
Operating companies should be able to start with a lean setup and add commercialisation or data capabilities step by step. A target picture without an entry stage gets ignored by exactly the units that would need it most.
- StartLean setup
- + step by stepCommercialisation or data capabilities
- C
Treat local strategies as configuration
Direct sales, controlled in-store models and more programmatic approaches were not handled as competing routes but as different expressions of the same foundation.
- Direct
- Controlled in-store
- Programmatic
One foundation
- D
Make knowledge transferable
Experience was translated into workshop logic, readiness principles and illustrative blueprints. Experience that lives only in people's heads and project archives does not scale, however good it is.
Experience translated into - Workshop logic
- Readiness principles
- Blueprints
The trade-offs
05 / 07Three tensions between group and subsidiary
- Group standardlocal autonomy
Standards create scale, local exceptions secure market fit. Every exception weakens the standard a little — and every refused exception weakens acceptance.
- Central platformdecentralised accountability
Technical uniformity needs clear local ownership for data and operations. Centrally provided, locally unmaintained is the most common failure pattern.
- Full target picturebarrier to entry
A complete model must not deter smaller units from starting. Completeness and accessibility are in direct conflict here.
Outcome
06 / 07- 01
A reusable thinking model emerged for several units of a corporate group, with a clear separation between mandatory foundation and optional expansion stages.
- 02
The underestimated effect was linguistic: a shared vocabulary for technical, organisational and commercial scaling questions. In a group structure that is often the precondition for negotiating about the same thing at all.
What I took from it
07 / 07Scaling does not mean doing the same thing everywhere. It means applying the same principles repeatably.
A blueprint is only valuable if it separates cleanly between indispensable core and configurable expression. Where that separation is missing, every discussion turns into a debate about first principles.
Competences shown
- Scaling Strategy
- Enterprise Architecture
- Change Enablement