CASE STUDY – SUITE
Gaining governance bandwidth through entity management modernization
How one of France’s biggest multi-industry groups modernized entity management by merging systems and enabling autonomy.
AT A GLANCE
INTRODUCTION
The first phase of DiliTrust’s partnership with this multinational powerhouse, active in telecommunications, construction, and energy, involved migrating from an outdated governance tool to DiliTrust’ older version the entity management platform. The predecessor to today’s Legal Entity Management solution, was powerful and highly customizable, but it came with its own limitations. As the organization grew, so did its internal challenges. By 2023, with several major projects underway, including a key acquisition and more and more data to manage, the group needed a full-on reset of how they handled entity management.
DiliTrust partnered with the group to address the legacy issues left from its first LEM solution era. Reference data had become inconsistent and difficult to maintain, and daily operations depended heavily on HQ. The next phase focused on restoring clarity and empowering each business unit to operate with greater autonomy.
THE CHALLENGE
An overbuilt but underpowered solution in place
While the first had once enabled strong central control, it was now slowing the organization down. The turning point came when the company recognized the urgent need to restructure and clean its reference data, which had become fragmented and unreliable. With over 10,000 entities across infrastructure, broadcast, and utilities, the group had to contend with complex and duplicative reference lists, mandates, roles, signatories, that had grown into clutter. Though teams had adapted to their previous LEM tool, they were increasingly feeling its limits, especially due to the tool’s heavy reliance on the HQ team for updates and maintenance. It was powerful but underutilized due to structural inefficiencies.
Key challenges included:
To answer their needs, DiliTrust set out to streamline governance and give each business unit the tools to operate independently.
THE SOLUTION
Rewiring governance: Migrating to the new generation of entity management
DiliTrust who had been working with the organization for near 5 years by the time, explained that migrating to the latest entity management solution (that you know as LEM) would be a better option than cleaning everything up on the old tool . The new full SaaS solution, would simultaneously clean and streamline data with the help of DiliTrust experts and experts from the company. From February to October 2023, the project reshaped entity management for the entire group: for the entire group.
A full migration to LEM, moving to the full SaaS DiliTrust solution embedding data cleanup.
An extremely personalizable solution, with conditional fields that adapt to the users region.
Distributed admin rights to empower each business unit and entity manager with localized control
Kept certain degrees of personalization from the previous LEM solution, making change easier on end users.
One of the biggest challenges during the migration was integrating with the existing LEM environment from the energy company that had recently been acquired. DiliTrust successfully coached teams from both organizations and across all entities to take ownership of the platform and transition to a more decentralized system. This shift wasn’t obvious at first, as the company had gotten used to managing the platform centrally through the parent entity. Thanks to dedicated training sessions and continuous support, the partnership was positioned for long-term success.
Focus on the teamwork: Every business unit was involved from the beginning. From construction to telecoms, all entities participated in the process. Through design workshops, hands-on training, and mockup sessions, DiliTrust helped embedded a new way of working. 24/7 support for all users also helped remove friction and encourage adoption.
THE RESULTS
One platform, one shared goal
A new operational system emerged as the organization moved to a full SaaS-based LEM solution. Both management and reporting became faster, and the user experience was noticeably improved. Administrative tasks that were once bogged down by bureaucratic processes now run smoothly within the platform. One of the biggest benefits for end users was that, even though the project involved a migration, the organization still found a strong level of customization to support the needs of such an infrastructure-heavy sector.
With its new platform and decentralized structure, the group is now set up to evolve faster, collaborate smarter, and handle whatever comes next, whether that’s growth, change, or another big acquisition.
Moving from Enablon to DiliTrust gave us a better tool, and moving it to the full SaaS LEM gave our teams the ownership they needed.
– Project Manager
You’ve seen how DiliTrust helped a global telecommunications, energy, and construction leader move from central control to agile, decentralized entity management. Discover how we can help your organization do the same.