How organisational structure unlocks experience optimisation success

Securing C-suite buy-in is the first step, but making it work requires transforming how teams collaborate across the organisation. 

Brand teams focus on awareness, content teams on delivery, and CRO teams on conversion. Each delivers results within their own department, but the cumulative business impact never quite materialises. On paper, everyone's optimising. In practice, nobody is. 

The problem isn't capability or commitment. It's structure. 

From Fragmentation to Integration 

When CIPD began their digital transformation, they faced a challenge that extended well beyond technology. With 160,000+ members globally, CIPD struggled with disconnected digital experiences. Internally, more than 400 systems, siloed departments, and multiple platforms made it difficult to deliver consistent, measurable growth. 

The transformation required a comprehensive approach spanning organisational structure, processes, and technology simultaneously. Customer journey mapping helped shift CIPD to a member-first mindset before implementing new platforms, ensuring technology served the reorganised operating model rather than perpetuating existing fragmentation. 

As Rich Chapman, Optimizely's Head of Experimentation, explains: "EO works when teams are open about their roadmaps and responsibilities. This allows company objectives to become aligned in the workflow. It's a many-pronged approach, where data science identifies opportunities, UX designs the experience, dev builds variations and CRO frames the hypothesis and runs experimentation. But the magic is in the middle: get the workflow right, and the whole engine turns faster." 

This pattern repeats across industries. When workflows don't align and objectives diverge, the cumulative impact falls short. The breakthrough comes when teams openly share roadmaps and responsibilities, embedding company objectives directly into how work flows. 

From Centralised Control to Distributed Authority 

Traditional organisational models concentrate decision-making at the top, where every variation, every test, every significant change requires senior approval. This creates bottlenecks where optimisation programmes slow to the pace of executive availability rather than the speed of insight, draining efficiency from teams who wait days or weeks for decisions that could be made in hours. 

Successful programmes flip this model by decentralising authority and pushing decision-making closer to the teams doing the work. A strong operating model sets the structure, and governance makes it work by empowering teams and individuals to act fast on data and insight. 

What Successful Structures Deliver 

When organisations get structure right, four key benefits emerge. 

Governance that supports, not controls. Clear roles, shared guidelines and strategic oversight help keep everyone aligned without slowing things down. The goal is providing guard rails without creating gates. 

More time for strategic work. Coordinating plans helps avoid duplicated work, removes delays, and keeps the focus on the key priorities. Teams stop firefighting misaligned initiatives and focus on what moves the business forward. 

Shared goals across departments. When teams work towards the same outcomes (like increasing active users or reducing churn), optimisation efforts have a bigger impact on the business. Departmental KPIs get replaced with holistic measures that reflect real customer experience and commercial performance. 

Collaborative ways of working. With a more agile cross-functional structure in place, teams can move quickly from insight to idea to test. That means faster learning, better results, and stronger accountability at every level. 

The shift from centralised to decentralised models requires honest assessment of where friction exists today and what needs to change. Organisations that make the structural investment see results compound over time in both commercial performance and operational efficiency. Teams collaborate naturally rather than territorially, optimisation becomes continuous rather than project-based, and commercial impact becomes measurable and sustained. 

The Foundation for What Comes Next 

Experience optimisation isn't another initiative to layer onto existing structures. It's a fundamental shift in how organisations operate, and structure determines whether that shift succeeds or stalls. 

C-suite buy-in establishes strategic priority and organisational structure enables teams to collaborate effectively, but one more foundation determines whether optimisation delivers its full potential. The technology infrastructure that supports the work. 

Want to understand where your organisation sits on the experience optimisation maturity curve and what structural changes would unlock both commercial impact and operational efficiency? Download our full Experience Optimisation whitepaper for frameworks, case studies, and practical guidance on building the organisational foundations that drive measurable results.