By Elizabeth Gousse Ballotte, Partner, Mark Bednarz, Partner and Umer Dangra, Manager
Key Takeaways
- Organizational reviews are essential tools for aligning strategic goals with internal operations, structure and talent.
With the evolving business landscape and impact of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), these reviews help ensure organizations remain efficient, agile and compliant. - Signs of cultural or structural misalignment — such as high turnover, low morale or fragmented processes — often signal the need for a formal organizational review.
These indicators may become more critical under OBBBA-related expectations around workforce modernization and accountability. - Technology must enable collaboration, service delivery and adaptability to meet both operational needs and federal modernization standards.
Reviews should assess whether IT systems are optimized not only for internal goals but also to capitalize on funding opportunities and requirements introduced by OBBBA.
The pandemic was an eye opener for organizations around the world, providing real-time lessons regarding the maturity of business operations. Companies everywhere had to rapidly shift and digitally transform to adopt new ways of working and collaborating. The result was a heightened focus on agility and resilience, with changes to adapt now definitively part their organizational DNA. This, in turn, resulted in enhanced monitoring and tracking of metrics around emerging risks, disruptive technologies and talent availability.
Similarly, recent shifts at the federal level have introduced significant changes in legislation, public sector workforce structures and international engagement. Many of these efforts reflect a broader emphasis on operational efficiency, adaptability and long-term sustainability across government systems.
Contributing to these shifts, enactment of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) introduces sweeping changes in operational standards, reporting requirements and talent structuring across federal and federally affiliated organizations. The OBBBA underscores a national push toward agility, digital transformation and improved service delivery, aligning directly with the goals of formal organizational reviews.
Both scenarios have created an expectation for organizations to be much more efficient, proactive and adaptive to keep up with the world’s fast-changing environment and economic fluctuations. To get there, today’s companies would greatly benefit from conducting formal organizational reviews.
Organizational Reviews: The New Necessity
An organizational review evaluates the efficiency, effectiveness and alignment of an organization’s strategic goals with its operations and resources. It can be an independent assessment, either one-time or recurring. More importantly, formal organizational reviews help provide insight into current operations and identify opportunities for improvement and growth. So, what exactly is an organizational review?
The Three-Legged Stool: People, Process, Technology
When we discuss organizational reviews with clients, we like to use the analogy of a three-legged stool, with each having equal importance in keeping the stool (the organization) upright: People, Process, Technology (PPT).
In conducting an organizational review, it’s not only important to look at each leg separately and consider its unique elements, but it’s necessary to understand the overlaps as well — how one might impact the other.
People: For instance, when reviewing your People leg, think about your culture (goal-driven or people pleasing), the style of your leadership (out shaking hands or behind-the-scenes), how your organization is structured (flat/agile, dense/multi-level), skillsets/capabilities of current talent and if sufficient or aligned to support future strategies, employee-engagement activities (are they enough) and how you compensate your staff (should salaries be increased to keep and attract high-level talent).
The OBBBA emphasizes workforce modernization and skills alignment in federally regulated entities. Organizational reviews can help identify whether current talent structures and leadership styles meet these new mandates, particularly around succession planning and upskilling.
Process: When evaluating your operational processes, we recommend doing a deep dive to explore every area and ferret out all opportunities to improve — then embed ways for continuous improvement. Think of things like your governance structure, how decisions are made, policies and procedures (are they easy to revise/adapt to changing needs or priorities), workflows (do the steps make sense, are they fluid) and the roles and responsibilities of those performing the tasks (who’s doing what; is anything/anyone duplicated).
Under the OBBBA, organizations must now comply with stricter reporting timelines and workflow transparency protocols. A review of existing processes can help ensure alignment with these new regulatory expectations and reduce exposure to compliance risks.
Technology: While the Technology leg may seem somewhat obvious — in that something is either a technological item or not — it’s not quite that clear cut. Of course, IT systems, infrastructure and hard or soft (cloud) assets must constantly be assessed, maintained and updated. But equally important is understanding the impact that new technologies will have on your operations, processes, leaders, employees and clients. These are all additional considerations where your Technology team must be actively engaged and collaborative with your company leaders and Human Resources and Client Services teams.
The OBBBA also provides funding incentives for adopting modern IT infrastructure. Organizational reviews should therefore assess not only current technological capabilities but also identify areas where federal alignment could unlock funding or support transformation initiatives.
Getting Started
Before conducting a formal organizational review, we recommend that company leaders first ask themselves a few fundamental questions:
- Does the existing structure of your organization enable achieving its strategic goals and objectives?
- Does your organization have the right people in the right roles and responsibilities?
- Does your organization have the right tools and techniques to support agility?
- Does your organization have an effective succession planning process in place?
Common Catalysts for Organizational Reviews
There are other indicators that leaders should also assess to identify the need to perform an organizational review. Misalignment of organizational structure, operational processes, capabilities of talent and/or technology infrastructure with strategic goals is a big one. Other catalysts may include high employee turnover, low employee morale, processes that are manual/outdated, internal or external auditor findings pointing to breaches or misalignments, regulatory corrective actions, low confidence in monthly metrics/reports, delayed account reconciliation, uncertainty around payables or vendor complaints about late payments, duplicate data entry, inconsistent data points and, alarmingly, a whistleblower event.
If your organization has experienced any of these, it’s likely time for a formal organizational review.
Additionally, regulatory shifts – particularly the OBBBA – may require organizations to restructure departments, implement new technology solutions or conduct workforce reclassification.
We Can Help
With today’s turbulent market swings and economic headlines shifting daily, now is the time to make sure your organization is in position to proactively assess and respond, not just react. Our team of experienced professionals offers a range of services to ensure your organization has the support it needs.
Whether your organization is navigating new requirements under the OBBBA or simply seeking to future-proof operations, our team is prepared to deliver reviews that address both current gaps and emerging mandates.
PKF O’Connor Davies has developed a comprehensive approach when conducting organizational reviews that focuses on the three fundamental legs of the stool: People, Process and Technology.
Having said that, there is not a one-size-fits-all, universal template for organizational reviews. Our approach is fully customizable, based on the unique needs and requirements of each organization we serve.
Our clients have gained a number of benefits resulting from our tailored help through this formal process, including improved operational efficiency, identification of best practices, enhanced accountability, risk mitigation, cost savings, improved service delivery … to name a few.
Contact Us
We welcome the opportunity to answer any questions that you may have related to this topic or any other accounting, audit, tax or advisory matters. Please email any of the Risk Advisory Services team members below:
Elizabeth Gousse Ballotte
Partner
eballotte@pkfod.com
Mark Bednarz
Partner
mbednarz@pkfod.com
Umer Dangra
Manager
udangra@pkfod.com