The development of the interim management market is no longer to be demonstrated and companies have understood the advantages and benefits of this "on demand management" service or that can also be called as "Management As A Service".

On the other hand, the different possible areas of intervention are still unclear for clients, as well as for most first-time interim managers, i.e. those who wish to embark on this business after a rich managerial experience and have developed various areas of sectoral, technical or functional expertise.

This article aims to popularize the 5 most common types of assignments in interim management, using some well-known mathematical symbols, as a mnemonic means.

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The most frequent area of intervention in interim management is to guarantee the business continuity of a key managerial function in the company and this in an emergency context over a period of a few months. For example, following the early departure of a previous manager due to dismissal, sick leave, maternity leave, or even death.

This temporary replacement of an executive may also occur in the case of a recruitment in progress which may be long to find on the permanent market.

The objective of this type of assignment is therefore mainly to take over from a previous manager that we did not necessarily have the opportunity to meet upon his arrival to make a transfer of the files in progress or to make a bevel and run his service "as is", hence the use of the equal sign to illustrate this type of assignment.

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The second most common area of intervention in interim management is to drive change and therefore to do things differently.

It is thus a question of starting from a situation A and making it evolve towards B.

We can cite different examples in all areas:

In the general management function, moving from a hierarchical organization to matrix, in the commercial function, it can be a question of changing an organization of the sales force from geographical to sectorial for example, in the IT function, to change ERP, in the HR function, to change the HR organization by creating shared service centers, in the finance function, to internalize or outsource the management of accounting, etc.

We can also highlight two strategic change management for companies today, such as the digital transition (transversal mission) and the ecological transition (impact and transversal mission). We are talking about the implementation of transformation plans that may involve the use of several interim managers.

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The third type of intervention that can be mentioned concerns development assignments, which consists of adding value in the company.

For example, developing a new activity, a new production site, a new market segment, a new international subsidiary, implementing software bringing new functionalities, creating a new department, developing a product or service offering...

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The fourth area of intervention is to reduce costs in a company by carrying out a restructuring or a "downsizing" operation. This can be done in the case of the implementation of an Employment Protection Plan in a company, the partial or total closure of a network of points of sale or production sites for example. This type of intervention has been very much in demand historically during the great wave of deindustrialization.

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Finally, the last type requires both sales development AND cost reduction in order to be able to "turnaround" the company in difficulty. The two aspects must be treated in parallel to achieve the objective. Identifying new growth drivers and savings will be the main challenges to be met by the interim manager specialized in this type of mission.

Jean-Philippe Ménétret

President AE-CMT France