When Internal Collaboration Is Bad for Your Company

AEPL a Mumbai based company with turnover of 150 Crs and strength of 400 engineers has branch offices in Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad. They are in business of industrial process automation and factory automation and have manufacturing setup.

MSP, a Pune based company with turnover of 10 Crs and strength of 45 engineers is also in business of industrial process automation and has a manufacturing setup. MSP have developed innovative software for batch process in process automation.

AEPL has acquired MSP to achieve inorganic growth. It was decided that both organization will work in synergy and following benefits were projected:

1. Better utilization of manpower resources.

2. Better utilization of both manufacturing unit.

3. Multi-location presence will drastically increase sale of innovative product

4. Both will share best practices and standardize templates in process automation. This will reduced product execution time and eliminate rework in project.

5. AEPL will share best operating procedures and business related system to STIP.

But the last 6-7 months result shows that we are promoting cross unit collaboration just for the sack of collaboration. This collaboration cannot be called as "Worst" or "Bad" collaboration but it has not given any positive result. Rather in many areas the operating cost has increased, projects are getting delayed and time is wasted in resolving conflict. Following is the observation:

1. Previously both units were working separately. The HOD was complaining about shortage of manpower but was managing. Now after collaboration HODs are aggressively complaining that they are not getting manpower from other group. Resources are not shared and HODs feel that other unit does not understand priorities. Projects are getting delayed.

2. All branch head feel that they are struggling to achieve the sales target of existing product so nobody has even tried to sell the innovative software.

3. When project from one unit is partially offloaded to other manufacturing unit then people start complain than information is not correct or complete. The design is wrong as so on.. Too much time is wasted in synchronizing meeting.

4. MSP which was slim & thin organization in term of operating cost. It was active and flexible organization in terms of operation. Suddenly MSP has adapted high cost and facility oriented system of AEPL. The manpower cost and operating expenses has suddenly gone up.

5. "Whose best practices are really best" is a topic which is still unresolved.

The collaboration has failed to create the value. But before it destroys the values, the efforts have been taken to minimize the collaboration. It is decided