Month: April 2020

Agility@Scale: Solving the growth challenge in consumer packaged goods

| Charlie Ranalli

Conducting research for a customer project I came across this paper.

The premise is that the reconfiguration of the US market has undermined traditional growth models for consumer-packaged-goods companies, particularly large ones.

The authors argue that there is no single solution to the growth challenge; rather, changes along multiple dimensions are necessary.

While not directly focused on digital innovation, the correlation between what growing consumer packaged goods companies are doing and the traits of digital leaders is astonishing:

  • Build an agile, streamlined organization
  • Develop triple-A capabilities: Advanced analytics and automation
  • Fuel growth through agile resource reallocation
  • Ditch the stage gate for ‘test and learn’ innovation
  • Reset customer collaboration: E-commerce and small format
  • Deliver next-generation consumer engagement: ‘Consumer 3.0’
  • Use Agility@Scale to go broader and smaller

Highly recommended reading for executives in consumer packaged goods companies revising their strategies to revitalize growth strategies.

Agility@Scale: Solving the growth challenge in consumer packaged goods
Jan Henrich, Ed Little, Anne Martinez, Kandarp Shah and Bernardo Sichel
McKinsey & Company, July 2018

Solving the digital and analytics scale-up challenge in consumer goods

| Charlie Ranalli

McKinsey argues that consumer-goods companies have invested in digital and analytics, but that more than half of the time those investments have failed to yied the desired results.

Their research shows that only 40 percent of consumer-goods companies that have made digital and analytics investments are achieving returns above the cost of capital. The rest are stuck in what the authors call “pilot purgatory,” eking out small wins but failing to make an enterprise-wide impact.

But digital leaders are showing they way – with four core elements leading to digital and analytics success:

  • Set a bold long-term aspiration
  • Pursue ‘domain transformations,’ not unrelated use cases
  • Ensure the coherence of enablers across domains
  • Reconfigure your operating model for speed and flexibility

Solving the digital and analytics scale-up challenge in consumer goods
Ford Halbardier, Brian Henstorf; Robert Levin and Aldo Rosales
McKinsey & Company, 2020