Growth and innovation

Driving retail and consumer topline growth

As the US economy moves toward a return to economic growth, many retail and consumer companies have renewed their focus on entering new markets and segments with new offerings to drive topline growth. Companies can no longer attain substantial rates of growth or profit by tweaking the status quo, so they are looking to strategies and operating models geared towards product/services innovation to pursue growth.

However, many times retailers and consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies face poor and uncertain returns on their innovations and are challenged to select, implement and integrate the right types of growth and innovation. Companies need to capture superior, tangible value from growth investments, enhance the core business, rigorously select and prioritize the right levers, and work to use growth levers to be more nimble and effective.

Impacts to companies

  • Innovation enables organizations to provide engaging experiences in stores and online, and to deliver unique and valuable products and services.
  • Tracking technologies will enable seamless checkout while providing shoppers the opportunity to understand everything from product origin to brand legitimacy at the touch of an icon on a handheld device.
  • For the retailer, precise inventory level tracking, enabled by technology at all phases of the supply chain, will result in tighter management of inventory to optimize cash flow.
  • Deeper understanding of the data available on individuals to provide a detailed view of behavior and to make predictions ("Big Data")
  • More granular comprehension of product movement to meet regulations, reduce costs, increase safety, and mitigate loss.
  • Perpetual connectivity and communication manifested by the rise of internet penetration, smart devices, and social media.

What companies should do

Our professionals can help companies integrate any number of growth management strategies to pursue new markets and offerings including incubators, open innovation, and co-creation, as well as strategy related to private label/stores own brand products.

  • Perform a customer and channel profitability analysis.
  • Perform a market entry and strategy analysis.
  • Perform a channel strategy and analysis.
  • Optimize sales force effectiveness.
  • Increase company understanding of the value of IT innovation.
  • Access companies information decision and support technologies.
  • Post-deal integration including defining integration strategy and integrated operating model, capturing all sources of value, planning and program managing the enterprise wide integration effort and functional support across the full breadth of impacted business functions.

Resources