Case Study – PRODUCT MARKET REVIEW

THE CHALLENGE

REVERSE DECLINE IN SALES


For a leading food manufacturing brand operating across the UK wide education market, supplying over 5000 secondary schools, the 4D Team evaluated structural issues underlying a significant loss of market share and delivered fact based analytics to define and develop a product-market strategy to reverse the decline.  
 

DIAGNOSIS

4D business diagnostics identified deep structural issues within the business:

  • Year-on-year decline across market sectors due to penetration of global contract caterers with aggressive market share objectives
  • High level of customer churn leading to reduction of focus on securing and retaining existing customers and a resultant loss of sales
  • Aging product mix, over-reliant on 10 top products vulnerable to market share loss from new competitors and cannibalisation from own new products launch
  • Disconnect between the internal sales team and external key accounts managers leading to loss of customer intelligence vital for anticipating and reducing customer churn
  • Revival of the 'Scratch Cook' trend in the school catering environment posing a direct threat to the client's existing food business

DEVELOPMENT

  • Rapid deployment of 4D's structured methodology to gather, structure, analyse raw date from client's ERP system
  • Reviewed over 10 years of historical data to generate fact based insights to challenge the sales team's benign view of a deteriorating school food market environment
  • Conducted an extensive data collection programme from external market reports and management interviews to develop a new channel strategy
  • Designed and implemented best practice data collection methodology and analytical processes to drive a step change in new customer targeting and acquisition processes
  • Revised order chasing processes and customer call reports to improve visibility of the sales order book and gather vital market intelligence
  • Comprehensive price increase programme scoped and developed and management alignment gained on implementation

DELIVERY

strategy-development
  Strategy formulated to stem excessive churn in customers
  New customer acquisition processes implemented leading to double digit growth in account size
  Rapid alignment with sales and marketing team gained for balancing channel conflict resulting from potential
  Systematic price increase announced across product range, expected to generate over ££m in revenue and margin gain
  New sales dashboard and performance tracking successfully rolled out across sales, marketing, internal sales and finance teams

DIFFERENT

4D delivered business insights in record time from data mining of 10 years of granular data. New perspectives were gained for the management team from previously unavailable information due to lack of internal skills and technology to process large amounts of raw data.   

 

     
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