Agriculture – Fijishi

Farming techniques are out of date and inefficient, with limited focus on agricultural research and adoption of new crop technologies. Fijishi Agriculture plays a crucial role in pushing economic and human development as nearly 50% workforce depends on agriculture for their livelihood. There are several reasons behind low agricultural productivity.

Helping agriculture and food companies and organizations navigate disruptive trends and technologies, including shaping the broader food system.

We accelerate sustainable and inclusive growth and deliver transformational impact for food and agriculture companies and organizations by driving efficiencies, fueling growth, shaping industries, and increasing organizational effectiveness. Our proprietary tools and digital and advanced analytics capabilities, combined with extensive experience are the cornerstones of the value we bring to our clients. Fijishi Agriculture brings solutions for agriculture sectors ranging from IT, retail, and biotechnology to fertilisers and farm-equipment manufacturing. The services support improvements in economic status for people dependent on agriculture to make a living.

Digital tools and data have been transforming agriculture decades. The early promise of analytics and software tools in labs and greenhouses helped us to find genetic markers hidden among millions of bytes of data. Then new and effective digital tools moved on farm, and we developed new ways for growers to make decisions about their farm armed with data far beyond what the eye can see.

But there’s a new frontier being explored right now. What started in the labs as a tool to build best-in-class seeds and traits, and then grew to the farm where it provided actionable insights, is now being transformed again – going beyond the farm and into the value chain.

Agriculture is a complex industry, and we’ve all spent the last 10+ years figuring out ways to create and formalize data. We’re now in an age of digitization where creating and leveraging useful data to provide advice, build confidence, and help growers share in the value chain is the name of the game.

How do we help clients?

Agriculture Development & Food Security

We help to improve agri-food systems around the world by bringing innovative thinking, multi-disciplinary expertise, a nuanced understanding of the private sector, and world-class analytics.

About three-quarters of the world’s impoverished population depends on agriculture for a living, and low-income families on every continent struggle with accessing nutritious food. Our commitment to fighting world hunger, poverty, and malnutrition can be seen in our support for governments, companies, donors, development banks, and civil society tackling complex challenges.

We help to improve agri-food systems around the world by bringing innovative thinking, multi-disciplinary expertise, a nuanced understanding of the private sector, and world-class analytics. In addition, we partner with the Fijishi Center for Agricultural Transformation and Food Security to accelerate successful agricultural transformations for governments, companies, and society.

What we do?

Plan for transformations in rural economies
Raise smallholder farmers out of poverty
Improve the services of food banks and pantries
Tackle deforestation
Address the impacts of climate change
Plan for an epidemic of obesity
Fight childhood stunting

Digital

We combine the power of our deep-domain expertise in agriculture with thousands of developers, engineers, data architects, and scientists across the technology spectrum.

What we do?

We help clients unlock their full potential by using digital technology and advanced analytics in new ways.

Reinvent commercial and go-to-market approaches - Reinvent commercial and go-to-market approaches by designing omnichannel customer experiences that combine the latest technology with traditional salesforce excellence.
Reduce supply chain costs - Reduce supply chain costs by using digital technology to better plan, manage, and track across operations.
Rethink business models - Rethink business models by evaluating the opportunity for standalone digital businesses to aid incumbents compete against startups.
Use economic and yield models - Use economic and yield models to bring advanced analytics to every step of a company’s planning.

Investment

We combine leading-edge investor insights honed by our private equity experts with agriculture-market insights and proprietary tools to help clients with their range of needs.

Our in-depth knowledge of industry players, combined with our expertise in sectors such as advanced industries, consumer goods, and retail, gives us a nuanced understanding of the full agriculture value chain.

We support all types of investors across the full investment cycle, including private equity funds, pension funds, venture capital funds, and sovereign wealth funds, on many topics including thesis development, due diligence, and operational improvement.

What we do?

Conduct due diligence - Conduct due diligence using a flexible and analytics-driven approach that incorporates extensive proprietary knowledge and deep industry experience.
Develop targeted plans - Help portfolio companies develop and execute dynamic, targeted plans of action for value creation, drawing upon our broader functional knowledge from our commercial and operational practices.
Prepare maximum-value exits - Help owners prepare maximum-value exits by using a three-phase support model that covers planning, preparation, and execution for auctions and initial public offerings.
Increase performance - Make strategic choices to increase fund and firm performance by combining deep insights on global macroeconomic trends with proprietary research on market trends.

Marketing & Sales

Achieve commercial excellence through go-to-market strategy, pricing optimization, and sales execution. The agriculture industry is facing significant disruption, driven by macroeconomic, grower, and competitive pressures. Feeding an expected global population of 9 billion people in 2050 will require the industry to grow significantly while balancing resource pressure and increasing price volatility. We help clients address these pressing issues by identifying growth opportunities and working with them to achieve commercial excellence through go-to-market strategy, pricing optimization, and sales execution.

What we do?

Help agriculture clients achieve commercial excellence by finding sources of organic growth and achieving above-market returns.
Ensure consistent sales execution with compelling performance evaluation, incentive programs, and rigorous performance management.
Identify growth opportunities based on macrotrends, micromarkets, and data-driven segmentation of customers.
Optimize margins with the right price strategy and architecture, and superior price execution and contract management.
Pinpoint sales growth opportunities throughout the customer lifecycle, through customer acquisition, account management, up-sell and cross-sell, value selling, and retention.
Reinvent the end-to-end customer journey with a streamlined and omni-channel experience.
Set the go-to-market architecture and omnichannel strategy, supported by efficient and effective marketing, retailer selection and enablement, and sales coverage.
Upgrade sales talent and accelerate sales capability building.

Operations

We help clients improve efficiency and innovate for the future to produce quality products in a competitive way.
The agriculture industry faces a wide spectrum of challenges such as dramatic supply and demand variability and cyclicality, uncertainty in growing seasons, small and distributed rural sites, and an ongoing consolidation of players across the value chain.

At this pivotal point of innovation and disruption, we help clients improve efficiency and innovate for the future to produce quality products in a competitive way. We provide guidance on issues such as increasing plant productivity, improving supply chain and planning capabilities, evaluating network and footprint, and sourcing raw materials and inputs efficiently. Our approach focuses on identifying value drivers to deliver bottom-line impact, combining deep expertise, proprietary tools, and industry leading capabilities.

What we do?

Use digital tools to improve throughput, yield, and quality of manufacturing assets.
Improve equipment uptime through targeted maintenance and reliability programs.
Evaluate plant footprint to identify non-strategic or underperforming assets.
Redesign supply-chain planning processes and network optimization.
Develop procurement strategies and processes to reduce acquisition costs on key categories.
Engage the organization through holistic transformation efforts to improve performance and health.
Invest heavily capability building to ensure sustainable, lasting impact.

Organization

We help agriculture companies achieve the transformational change required to get ahead of shifting global consumer demand, evolving agricultural trends, and digital disruptions.

Change across the global food-value chain has accelerated rapidly in recent years, including input player consolidation, digitally enabled distribution approaches, and entrants into the market with disruptive aspirations.

To enable organizations to adapt, we help deliver rapid corporate turnarounds, unlock major efficiency gains through restructuring, create substantial value from mergers and acquisitions, and build enduring competitive advantage through superior talent and leadership.

What we do?

Bring analytical rigor to the science of organization, using facts and benchmarks to scope the opportunity and measure results.
Integrate every effort to strengthen the organization of business imperatives such as executing strategy, improving operations, and meeting customer needs.
Focus on short-term results, and also on building organizational health, both capabilities and qualities that underpin sustained performance.

Strategy

We help agriculture companies navigate a future of uncertainty, stemming from evolving commodity markets, climate change, and the rise of digitization as a disruptive force.

We provide support on issues ranging from corporate and business unit strategy to mergers and acquisitions. Our approach covers the full value chain, combining expert support with proprietary tools, analytics, and other industry knowledge such as animal health, consumer packaged goods, public sector, corporate strategy, and private equity.

What we do?

Improve performance across portfolios, pinpoint opportunities for growth in new business areas, and identify areas that might need to cut back or divest.
Develop innovation strategies and execute plans to win in a dynamic market.
Strengthen the strategy-development processes of companies to make better decisions and act on them.

Transformation

We create sustainable change for clients by combining proprietary tools and techniques with unmatched industry knowledge and capabilities.

Building and sustaining resilience is more important than ever in an industry strongly linked to annual cycles, external factors like weather and volatility in commodity prices, and the uncertainty in today’s geopolitical and macroeconomic environment.

We partner with clients to transform their organizations by understanding their full potential and creating a mechanism to achieve their goals. Our approach combines proprietary tools and techniques with unmatched industry knowledge to promote sustainable change.

What we do?

Evaluate the full potential of their business, as an investor would.
Integrate all facets of value creation—strategic growth; operational, functional and capital excellence; balance sheet health, and organizational agility—into a holistic transformation.
Develop a standard language and rigorous approach to organization-wide change, which is built on speed of decision making, value assurance, and empowering the frontlines.
Strengthen health and culture through dedicated efforts, approached with the same rigor as operational and financial-performance engagements.

Agriculture.