Introduction

In the first two parts of our Digital Strategy series, we discussed A&M’s view on the use of digital, data and artificial intelligence (AI) to accelerate business transformation and value creation.

Here we will share three recent client experiences that demonstrate the tangible value of putting data and digital capabilities at the core of commercial decision-making and execution.

In case study 1, A&M helped a client in the fast-moving consumer goods sector (FCMG) return to double-digit growth, using a data-driven route-to-market strategy that reversed a multi-year decline in market share and doubled operating profit targets within just 24 months.

In case study 2, A&M worked with a consumer goods business to implement a reset in its digital products and digital marketing spend. This allowed the company to reduce operational costs by 25% whilst boosting the return on investment (ROI) of digital content and marketing.

In case study 3, A&M reviewed and shifted a client’s channel strategy from a traditional “on-the-ground” distribution model to a modern B2B digital sales platform. This increased customer loyalty, provided deeper insights into buying behaviours and extended the reach of the sales team.  

Case study 1: Using data & analytics to find “where to play” and “how to win”

Background: A leading FMCG business was facing shareholder pressures to return to profitability and accelerate growth. Once a category leader in a key European market, it had fallen significantly behind its top rival, risking a “winner takes all” scenario.

Challenge: The client needed clarity on its current performance to identify “where to play” and “how to win”. This meant getting full visibility into individual customer, product, brand, distribution channel, and regional profitability to quantify and prioritise P&L challenges, and to define new growth opportunities. 

Results: 

1. Full P&L visibility – down to the SKU level: A&M built a data library of over three billion data points, integrating raw information from Finance, Marketing, Brand, supply chain, sales, and external sources to provide a comprehensive view of performance across all P&L lines.

For the first time, operational teams could see individual SKUs’ net profitability by country, channel, customer and even store. They also gained access to SKU-level commercial metrics, such as marketing or sales spend, previously available only at the P&L level. Indicators were detailed down to net profitability, factoring in all COGS, commercial costs, promotions and discounts, and SG&A support costs. 

 Data visibility for commercial growth: A&M’s approach

For a business with hundreds of brands, thousands of product variations, this degree of insight was groundbreaking. The company could now understand net profitability per SKU and various regional and customer segmentations – distinguishing the required commercial efforts for different SKUs (“easy sales” vs. “push marketing” vs. “local events and campaign-based products”), and understanding the impact of discounts and promotions per SKU / pack architecture to create the complete visibility on the actual return from those investments. Commercial leaders could now:

• Quickly identify “great customers” and client segment to go after
• Pinpoint the most profitable pockets and steer sales teams accordingly
• Focus on the highest-return promotions and discounts, considering brand and regional nuances
• Align specific brands and SKUs with regional growth areas, moving away from a “one size fits all” approach.

Conversely, this revealed a long tail of loss-making customers and SKUs, representing 10% to 20% of the portfolio, along with the reasons for underperformance, such as excessive discounting. Often the data challenged long-held assumptions, showing that accounts treated as ‘strategic’ by commercial teams were actually destroying business value.

2. A data-powered reset in sales strategy 

With deep visibility on the portfolio, the organization could now make sense of the unified analytics, drilling down into areas of commercial opportunity or improvement – where to play, how to win, and strategic actions to deploy for each customer segment, brand, and Region.

A&M partnered with commercial leaders to strategically select the right areas and products to focus on, and conversely where to reduce investments or even exit entirely in order to fund the required growth investments.

This sparked a complete sales strategy reset, including pricing and discounting adjustments for low-margin products, resource reallocation to most profitable areas and improved ROI of commercial spend. In one key market, the business redirected 25% of brand spend from underperforming to growth brands, stopped promotions on 30% of SKUs, re-allocated 50% of marketing spend into two to three growth regions and four to five high-margin SKUs, and reassigned key accounts of over 50 salespeople.

Case study 2: Resetting digital spend with clear visibility on data and digital ROI

Background: Despite heavy investments in a digital transformation programme, this consumer goods company was struggling to meet the required ROI, both in terms of end-user productivity gains as well as commercial performance improvements.

Challenge: The client required a review of their digital products and digital marketing spend to identify which assets to invest in or retire.

For digital marketing spend, there was no visibility on spend across markets, brand compliance was inconsistent, and agency spend was rising with no clear controls.

For digital products, a Factory had been established few years ago. Costs were significant but user adoption was limited and markets were unwilling to commit to digitally enabled growth. Some had created shadow product organizations deviating from commercial priorities, and most were voicing concerns its alignment to market needs.

Results:

1. Digital marketing programme reset and leadership focus on select areas

In a highly federated environment, A&M’s Digital team brought together key leaders across the organisation to reduce duplicated digital products, review content spend and establish ROI controls.

Our team worked with finance, commercial, global and market leads to map the business’ digital portfolio. This exercise uncovered annual spend of over 150 million euros on digital content, and of approximately 100 million euros on 50+ digital products scattered across markets. A heavy reliance on external vendors was also identified with at least 50 different external providers across marketing agencies, creative agencies, UI/UX providers, boutique product companies, and core SI players for app dev and maintenance.

Our team worked with finance, commercial, global and market leads to map the business’ digital portfolio. This exercise uncovered annual spend of over 150 million euros on digital content, and of approximately 100 million euros on 50+ digital products scattered across markets. A heavy reliance on external vendors was also identified with at least 50 different external providers across marketing agencies, creative agencies, UI/UX providers, boutique product companies, and core SI players for app dev and maintenance.

This newfound visibility drove important governance and procurement changes, including vendor consolidation from 50 to less than 20 providers and agencies. Internally, teams were financially incentivised to adopt existing global products and measure the ROI of deployments.