Program management of global strategy development for $4b food ingredient business for one of the largest US corporations
Growth Decisions Inc. All rights reserved
About the Client
The client is an American privately held global corporation and one of the largest corporations in the world ranked as a Fortune 20 by revenue. The company is a global leader in trading, purchasing, and distribution of grain and other agricultural commodities. The company operates in more than 70 countries and employees more than 100K people.
Business Challenge
The company manages a large portfolio of food ingredients that are used in the production of not only many industrial and consumer packaged foods but also pharma and personal care products. The global market for these ingredients was undergoing major changes due to fast-paced changes on customer needs, preferences, requirements and regulation. The company needed to develop a comprehensive global corporate strategy and related regional strategies to respond to such changes and determine an updated direction for the business, define asset investment, innovation portfolio and new capabilities required through organic growth as well as acquisitions.
How We Helped
Program managed the overall corporate growth strategy development from start to finish of a $4b business unit for one of the largest global corporations.
This very complex project included coordination and execution around multiple workstreams:
Drove from inception until completion of the overall PMO/Project management of the whole effort. This includes overall project design, definition of the corporate strategy development approach, resource management and coordination, facilitation with 50+ executives worldwide, team management, analytics and articulation and production of final deliverables. Facilitated several conference calls, in-person workshops and executive meetings throughout the engagement to discuss and validate key outputs and decisions.
Created a fact-based global market map and identified key attractive markets, profit pools (EBITDA) and products/technologies. This included heavy financial and performance scenarios modeling, consumer and competitive primary and secondary research and heavy analytics.
Assessed impact of corporate strategy scenario in existing assets and operations. Identified more than 130+ specific initiatives (i.e. new market segments, innovation and new products and solutions, new/ improved capabilities, potential acquisitions, cost improvements and JVs and partnerships). Modeled the impact of likely decisions on global assets and operations.
Crafted and validated with executives a differentiated “How to Win” approach by geography including critical capabilities required. Combined insights from market dynamics (i.e. forecasts and trends), customer needs and requirements (i.e. trends and shocks) and company capabilities (i.e. current and future) with top management engagement to validate strategic direction and related components.
Identified, profiled potential acquisition targets, built and validated resulting gameboard. Mapped relevant potential targets and strategic corporate and regional role (i.e. value chain integration, R&D acceleration, market access).
Estimated and validated the size of the prize (i.e. volume, value, improved margins) and investments needed to win and returns. After key decisions made, modeled resulting financials and crafted preliminary implementation activities and action plans.
Working as a growth strategist, I have the good fortune of helping companies address their most pressing growth strategy and innovation challenges. Regardless of industry or geographic location, my clients are relentless in their pursuit of strategies that will produce consistent, profitable growth. However, I also see how top management can struggle as they go about identifying, articulating and prioritizing growth opportunities.