Repositioning web-based service delivery in budget cuts and reorganisation

The existing operation had grown over the years around several expertise domains: digital user experience, online learning, digital employer services and digital platforms. Responsibilities were at the same time spread across various services, projects and governance forums. The management plan offered an ambitious direction (more focus on core flows, product operations, scalable solutions and measurable impact), but the underlying choices weren't yet sufficiently clarified.

There was ambiguity about the core mission, the priority audiences, the necessary core offering, what the service should and should not take on, the coherence between the domains, the role division with IT, product operations, communication and regional service delivery, and the impact of scaling down, rearranging and ongoing transitions. On top of that, uncertainty, change fatigue and concerns about the loss of expertise and identity were at play. The assignment therefore required both strategic sharpness and change-management care - and it played out within a broader reorganisation of the non-contact services, so the exercise could not anticipate a definitive organisational structure.

We reshaped the original broad policy and business plan exercise into a compact, decision-oriented positioning trajectory. Instead of organising yet another classical vision exercise, we started from the existing strategic direction and systematically brought the essence back to four questions: for whom must Web-based Service Delivery create value as a priority, which results must the digital layer make possible for these audiences, which expertise, products and functions are necessary for that, and which activities are in the core, in a grey zone or can be scaled down?

With a small positioning team, we organised focused work sessions in which we made the core qualities of the various domains visible, formulated guiding principles for digital service delivery, made the core offering per domain concrete, tested activities against various future scenarios, mapped dependencies and interfaces between services, made risks and grey zones explicit and linked operational and strategic impact analyses to the scenarios. We deliberately didn't start from preserving existing teams or structures - the focus was on the question which functions and expertise the organisation needs, regardless of where they are later organisationally housed.

The insight that tilted the exercise was simple but fundamental: stopping projects on its own barely freed up structural capacity. Further savings therefore required real choices about service delivery, expertise and priorities, not merely a reduction of projects.

From that moment, the conversation no longer went about 'what do we cut away?' but about 'which public value must we protect, and what expertise do we need at minimum for that?'. That shifted the logic from cutting costs to deliberate positioning.

The assignment resulted in a coherent and reusable decision basis: a sharpened core mission for Web-based Service Delivery, a concrete core offering per expertise domain, a clear relationship between audiences, client value and digital functions, scenarios for different future assignments, an overview of dependencies, risks and interfaces, explicit decision questions for management and governance, and an output matrix with which choices can be further validated and translated.

Complex strategic questions thus become workable decision frameworks. Not by immediately drawing a new structure, but by first making clear which public value must be protected, which expertise is necessary for that, where overlap or fragmentation sits and which consequences each choice has. So the exercise didn't become a theoretical positioning document, but a substantive basis for prioritisation, reorganisation and governance decision-making.