P&C Global Practices: Corporate Performance, Digital Transformation, Organization & Human Capital, Strategy & Innovation
Building an Agile Aerospace Enterprise with Integration & Innovation
One of the world’s top two aerospace manufacturing leaders found itself at an inflection point of growth and technological change. The manufacturer enjoyed a record commercial backlog and pursued innovative projects, yet its complex organizational structure and siloed culture, inherited from decades of multinational expansion began to constrain agility. Sensing an opportunity to streamline operations and unify its global divisions under a single brand, the company launched an ambitious transformation program (code-named “One Company”) to integrate its businesses and embrace digital innovation.
Recognizing the scale and strategic significance of the transformation, the manufacturer engaged P&C Global as its strategic partner to lead the enterprise-wide restructuring and leadership renewal. The decision reflected confidence in P&C Global’s integrated expertise across organizational design, digital transformation, and talent strategy—reinforced by trusted recommendations from senior leaders within the global aviation sector. Together, the teams charted a course to simplify the corporate structure, revitalize the top leadership team, and position the company to lead in a rapidly evolving aerospace market. This multi-year engagement delivered headline outcomes including a unified one-brand organization, faster decision-making and efficiency gains, and a wave of innovation initiatives that would redefine the client’s digital future.
Transformation Challenges in Aerospace
The client faced a formidable transformation challenge: how to merge several large business units – each with its own legacy processes, support functions, and cultural identity – into “one” cohesive enterprise without disrupting ongoing growth. Externally, the aerospace industry faced intensifying competition and rapid change, with new entrants and rising customer expectations pressuring incumbents to be more agile and innovative. Internally, the company’s dual-headquarter structure and duplicated corporate functions bred bureaucracy and slowed execution. Rather than viewing these issues as failures, the client approached them as an evolution required to “unlock untapped potential” – simplifying its governance and embracing digital ways of working to stay ahead of the curve. The need to maintain excellence in day-to-day operations, from commercial aircraft to defense and space projects, intensified the complexity of implementing structural change. Market dynamics such as volatile aircraft demand and global trade shifts, and a surge of new technologies (data analytics, automation, and AI) underscored the urgency to act. In engaging P&C Global, the client demonstrated bold leadership and strategic awareness: selecting P&C Global over other top consultancies for our proven ability to deliver end-to-end transformations that span strategy, organizational design, corporate performance, and talent. Together, we set out to eliminate silos, integrate the workforce under one vision, and infuse a digital-first mindset – all without interrupting the company’s momentum as a global industry leader.
Our Approach to Aerospace Digital Transformation
Designing the One Company Operating Model
P&C Global deployed a multidisciplinary task force combining experts from our Organization & Human Capital and Strategy & Innovation practices to design the new organizational blueprint. In close collaboration with the client’s leadership, we formulated a “One Company” operating model that would dissolve the old holding-company structure and fully integrate the divisions (Commercial Aircraft, Helicopters, and Defense & Space) under a single corporate umbrella. This involved consolidating duplicate corporate functions – finance, HR, legal, communications, etc. – into unified teams serving all business units. We facilitated cross-division workshops and cultural integration labs to foster a shared mission and values across the workforce. To ensure disciplined execution, P&C Global stood up a transformation PMO, governing the step-by-step realignment of reporting lines, cost centers, and decision rights.
Leadership Renewal & C-Level Transformation
Concurrently, P&C Global’s talent acquisition and digital transformation specialists led a leadership renewal program to refresh and future-proof the executive team. We worked with the client to define new leadership roles critical for the company’s next chapter – most notably, creating a Chief Digital Transformation Officer position to spearhead enterprise-wide digital innovation. P&C Global led a global executive search to identify and onboard a visionary digital leader for this role, marking the first time the company had a C-level executive dedicated to transformation. In parallel, the team also drove succession planning for other key roles and leadership coaching to instill an agile, collaborative mindset in the management ranks. To support cultural alignment, we also partnered with the client’s HR in rolling out an internal communications campaign around the “One Company” initiative, galvanizing employees around the unification effort.
Performance Alignment & PMO Governance
P&C Global’s corporate performance experts ensured that performance metrics and incentives were realigned with the new structure. We introduced enterprise-wide KPIs to track efficiency gains like reductions in overhead cost and decision cycle times from integration and innovation outputs such as the number of new digital initiatives incubated. By leveraging P&C Global’s full-suite capabilities, from high-level strategy design to on-the-ground implementation and talent alignment, we provided a turnkey transformation solution. The approach was holistic: rationalize the organization, rejuvenate leadership, and ignite a culture of innovation. Throughout, P&C Global maintained business continuity and kept the client’s stakeholders (board, government partners, unions) closely engaged, ensuring transparency and buy-in for the changes. This careful balance of strategic planning and human-centric change management allowed the “One Company” program to proceed at pace without destabilizing the company’s ongoing operations.
Results & Impact of Aerospace Restructuring & Innovation
Unifying the Organization & Streamlining Operations
Over the three-year engagement, the client realized a sweeping transformation that has strengthened its market position and internal agility. By the second year, the once-separate group and division entities had been legally and operationally merged into a single corporation with one unified brand and headquarters, fulfilling the vision of “One Company.” This organizational streamlining immediately yielded significant benefits: decision-making accelerated and bureaucracy was cut dramatically, as the company itself noted – the new, simpler structure “enables faster decision-making, less bureaucracy, greater collaboration and increased efficiency.” Redundant management layers were eliminated, and fully integrated support teams began servicing all divisions, replacing siloed back-office functions. The reorganization, combined with associated efficiency programs, yielded substantial savings (approximately €200+ million annual cost reduction in overhead) and enabled faster decision-making. For example, employees can now be more easily reassigned across projects, and shared services (like procurement and R&D) have reduced duplication.
Cultural Transformation & Employee Engagement Gains
Equally important, the workforce became more unified and engaged – employee surveys and feedback reflected a higher level of alignment with the company’s mission and increased cross-division collaboration, a cultural shift directly linked to the “One Company” initiative (reinforcing the “better together” ethos envisioned at the start and improving its employee engagement and innovation index scores by ~30%, as internal surveys later showed).
Digital Innovation at Scale: 450+ Initiatives
The leadership renewal component of the transformation also paid dividends. The newly appointed Digital Transformation Officer quickly became a catalyst for innovation, overseeing a portfolio of over 450 digital initiatives across the enterprise. Under this leadership, the client launched several breakthrough digital programs that have enhanced its industry stature. For example, the company introduced a first-of-its-kind open aviation data platform – a platform now used by airlines worldwide to improve operational performance. This platform, developed during the engagement, has been heralded as a foundation for the industry’s digital transformation. The organization also rolled out a new digital design & manufacturing system that leverages advanced tools to drastically shorten aircraft development cycles and reduce production costs, positioning the company to bring future products to market faster. Innovation incubators were energized: the client’s Silicon Valley technology outpost produced a range of cutting-edge projects, including an electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing demonstrator that successfully completed its first test flight – a tangible example of accelerated innovation under the renewed leadership.
Accelerating Agility & Enterprise Collaboration
Together, these outcomes translated into an enterprise that is more agile, technologically advanced, and resilient. The client not only maintained its leadership in the aerospace sector but also set new benchmarks for how a large manufacturer can reinvent itself. Operationally, the integration drove agility: decisions that once took weeks as they climbed multi-layered ladders were made in days under the new flat structure. The cultural impact – a “One Team” mindset spanning commercial and defense units – led to stronger collaboration on projects (e.g., shared engineering resources and best practices across divisions), which in turn boosted productivity and employee morale.
Future-Proofing Growth & Industry Leadership
Externally, stakeholders and investors praised the transformation as forward-looking; in just two years, the company’s innovation initiatives such as its digital platform and next-generation design programs were receiving industry accolades for pushing the envelope. The client emerged from this engagement with not just a leaner organization and refreshed leadership, but a scalable model for continuous innovation. The strategic implications are profound: the new capabilities and culture established through “One Company” have become a sustainable competitive advantage, enabling our client to adapt quickly in a dynamic market and capture emerging opportunities (from urban air mobility to data-driven services) ahead of peers.
Conclusion: Leading Aerospace Transformation
By boldly restructuring its organization and renewing its leadership, the client achieved what many thought impossible for a company of its scale – it became “One” agile enterprise primed for the digital age. In summary, P&C Global helped the client integrate and simplify a complex global operation, install forward-thinking leaders, and ignite a wave of innovation that has enhanced efficiency, employee engagement, and market responsiveness. This successful transformation illustrates how a legacy industry giant can reinvent itself from within: uniting people around a shared vision, modernizing ways of working, and embracing technology to drive future growth. The “One Company” case stands as a testament to the power of strategic, human-centric transformation – delivered on time and on target.
Impact at a Glance:
- Unified corporate structure (one HQ, one brand) yielding faster decisions and multi-million-dollar efficiencies; Introduction of a Chief Digital Officer role driving 450+ digital projects
- Double-digit percentage reduction in overhead costs, fueling reinvestment in R&D
- Enhanced agility and collaboration across 130,000+ employees
- Accelerated innovation pipeline (e.g., new digital platforms and flight demonstrators) securing the client’s position as an aerospace innovator.
For global organizations facing similar challenges, whether integrating siloed divisions, revitalizing leadership, or navigating a digital transformation. P&C Global offers the proven expertise to architect and execute such complex change. Our collaborative approach, spanning Strategy & Innovation, Organization & Human Capital, Digital Transformation, and more, ensures that every aspect of your transformation is covered.
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