Arbitrating 14 Projects in a Family-Owned Distribution Group
Fourteen projects were running in parallel, and nobody decided which ones truly deserved the group's resources. Our team set up a simple arbitration process that led to three projects being stopped or merged, freeing about CHF 153,000 per year.
The company
A family-owned distribution group in luxury retail with 220 employees, whose management and family shareholders want to keep control over priorities.
The problem and its cost
Each department had launched its own projects as opportunities arose: in-store experience redesign, customer data work, planning tools, logistics initiatives. No shared framework allowed them to be compared, and no body decided what should continue, wait or stop. The same teams were pulled onto several projects at once, deadlines slipped, and projects were rarely formally closed.
The cost was twofold. Three projects no longer answered a clear need: two largely overlapped, and a third had lost its sponsor. With an average annual budget of CHF 85,000 per project, that meant CHF 255,000 per year (3 projects × CHF 85,000) spent with no expected outcome. On top of that came a less visible cost, the attention of management and teams scattered across secondary topics.
The strategy
Our team first established the facts before discussing priorities. A full inventory of the fourteen projects, with owner, budget, expected outcome and dependencies, was needed so the discussion would rest on comparable information rather than impressions. Without that base, every decision would have been contested by the sponsor concerned.
Only then did we define the selection criteria with management and the family, and hold an arbitration session project by project. This order is deliberate: criteria are set before it is known which projects they affect, which makes the decisions acceptable. The last step was to make the process permanent, so that arbitration became a routine rather than a one-off exercise.
The execution
Team: For this mission, we brought together a dedicated contact, our core team in strategy, finance and operations, and a network expert with senior experience in high-end product distribution.
- →A single project register with owner, budget, expected outcome, milestones and dependencies.
- →A four-criteria assessment grid, validated by management and the family, to compare projects with each other.
- →A quarterly arbitration committee with clear decision rules: continue, merge, pause or stop.
- →A one-page dashboard built in the tools the client already uses, to track budgets and milestones.
We used AI to read the descriptions and meeting notes of the fourteen projects and flag overlaps in scope between them. Our team then checked each suggested link one by one with the people involved.
Most of the result comes from organization: written criteria, a committee that meets on a fixed date, and a real ability to say no. No software was added, and tracking relies on existing tools.
The result
Expected annual saving: 60% of CHF 255,000, about CHF 153,000. For an investment of about CHF 45,000, payback comes in 4 months.
The rate is 60% rather than 100% because a stopped project leaves residual commitments (contracts, transition work) and a merged project keeps part of its scope, so only a share of the budget is actually freed.
- Teams focus on fewer projects and complete them more consistently.
- Management and the family share an up-to-date view of priorities and budgets.
- Decisions are made faster and better understood, including when they end a project.
The assumptions
- Projects stopped or merged: 3
- Average annual budget per project: CHF 85,000
- Share of budget actually freed: 60%
- Mission investment: about CHF 45,000, payback in about 4 months
Scenario type, built from real missions and anonymized.
In the same cocoon
