Global Packaged Foods Company: Sales Promotions Process Improvement

Accenture leveraged innovative and distinctive methods and helped this client rethink its promotions process design to mitigate associated costs and maximize its investment to enable efficient growth and increase revenue and profit potential.

A recent increase in the use of premium promotions by the food company’s competition in the consumer foods industry prompted it to revisit applying this sales promotion technique as part of its new marketing strategy. The company had previously moved away from using premium promotions.

Before reintroducing premium promotions, the client engaged Accenture to help diagnose complexity issues and identify opportunities for improvement in the promotions process.

Accenture organized a well-rounded team of management consultants from our Process and Innovation Performance service line with experience in the consumer goods and services industry. The Accenture team brought to bear deep knowledge and skills in operations strategy and complexity optimization.

Accenture first conducted a comprehensive assessment, which identified issues with process governance, consistency and repeatability, performance drivers, visibility and hidden costs. We then proposed a set of innovative solutions to help address each of the systemic issues identified.

Accenture helped the client develop a recipe for high performance by revealing key linkages between the costs of complexity and performance in its premium promotions process. Accenture’s Complexity Management methodology provided strategic and tactical insights for reducing process costs and lead times. The ultimate impact was operational transparency.

The project provided insight into the cost implications of decisions throughout the promotions value chain.