Analyzing Your Regional Branches

Your regional branch is essentially a projection of your business onto a certain geographic area – continent, country, state/province, city, etc. Thus, it becomes sort of a ‘business within a business’ but with even more limited functionality compared even with a business unit (because it is usually supposed to sell all of your products and services). Which means even more limited corporate objects map.

Usually, the branch is in the business of selling your products and services (manufacturing, R&D, etc.) are usually done by either corporate headquarters or special internal value centers.

 

A well-developed business typically has a wide and deep hierarchy of regional branches – starting with corporate headquarters then going down to geographic areas such as Europe or Latin America; then – to country level (Canada, France, Israel, etc.)

Obviously, this hierarchy must (1) be comprehensive and (2) match your corporate geographic strategy. And a strategic plan for each branch must match your corporate strategic plans.

Every regional branch has its own history, general and marketing strategies, strategic objectives and plans, target markets (geographically segmented), its own risk management system, stakeholders, projects and processes, obviously a functional organizational chart and personnel. Everything else is provided by headquarters.

Oh, and because these objects and processes of each branch are supposed to be tightly integrated with corporate ones, you can expect that you will have to analyze your SBU concurrently with your whole business system.

In addition to asking the usual questions related to business entity analysis, you will have to find answers to several specific questions that you will find on the next page.