Consumer Products | Case Study
Challenges
One of the largest multinational beverages Company was having difficulty in
understanding why some of their promotions are successful and why others are
not. A majority of their promotions were not meeting the expected results in a
specific market and the company had a challenge in making their on-premise
promotions more successful.
Diagnostic Study
Our team conducted a field study of the various stakeholders involved to
identify the gaps that exist in the current promotion framework and uncover the
reasons why the promotions are performing below expectations. The unstructured
information from the field was captured across various brands from multiple
types of accounts in different locations. The field study was done on a real
time basis as the promotions were being executed, by collecting feedback from
multiple segments of people including customers of diverse demographics and
psychographics, retailers, brand managers and distributors. Our diagnostic study
uncovered the following issues that were preventing the expected lift in sales
from the promotions:
● Limited alignment of the stakeholder objectives owing to the lack of
understanding of motivations
of the various players in the channel
● Ad hoc process for booking promotions without strategic planning
● Standard KPI’s used in the decision making process which leads to significant
gap in assessing the
activity’s potential, and as a result, leads to missed and
under-performing opportunities
● No system or process to authenticate the information and correlate the
information from the field
as the promotion is being executed. This results in the inability
to make changes in the plan on a
real time basis.
Discovery analytics
Based on our diagnostic field study, we developed a framework that enables the
discovery and alignment of the stakeholder objectives through collaboration in a
dynamic fashion. Further, understanding of the assumptions such as budgets,
expected results, both tangible and intangible, and other constraints is also
developed in the framework.
Through our state of the art analytics product TREK, we utilize the unstructured
information arising from all the stakeholders including the CPG Company, the
distributor, the promotion company, the retailer and the consumer to discover
the blind spots and problems that are faced in the process of executing the
promotion. Based on the analysis, the following insights were achieved:
● The real time online connectivity between the on premise promotions and the
corporate/regional
offices enables the CPG Company to manage the dynamics taking place
in the field in an efficient
manner that improves the promotion impact significantly.
● Marketing concepts and giveaways are great but there is a need to fine tune
them for the specific
environment where the promotion is being conducted.
● The promotion booking process plays a crucial role on the outcome of the
promotion. To succeed in
booking the right locations for the promotions, it requires a lot
of field knowledge that resides as
unstructured information within the stakeholders managing the
process on the ground.
Solution
● By developing a dynamic KPI system for performance measurement that leverages
the unstructured
information from the field based on specific situations and
accounts, the ability to identify blind
spots in the promotion execution was substantially improved.
● By providing the end user, the ability to make changes to the standard
templates of operations, the
company’s agility to handle the dynamics of the field was improved.
● By providing the ability to incorporate data from multiple formats such as
email, MS word, media
etc, we improved the company’s ability for real time decision
making across a diverse user base
that provides the entire 360 degree view of all the key decision
factors in real time and its overall
impact on the decision.
Results
● As a result of analysis and discovery of key nuggets of knowledge from the
unstructured information
in the field, the CPG Company was able to understand why the
promotion was offered to the specific
location even though the location was not a good fit for this type
of promotion, which triggered the
failure to achieve the expected results.
● The company was able to determine how the guidelines for the promotions were
used by the field
people in deciding the locations for the promotions.
● Overall, the CPG Company was able to utilize information observed in the
field, but not captured
through the standard metrics, and turn it into near term actionable
direction that dramatically
improved the promotion execution.
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