Consumer packaged goods.
Digital transformation, once a necessary journey, is now an urgent priority for consumer products brands. Starting with a deep understanding of your business, Fijishi’s consumer products consultants help clients find the right use cases to develop the digital capabilities that power consumer-centric innovation. We begin our consumer products consulting services by partnering with you to define, test, and prove how advanced data collection and analysis, AI, digital supply chain, and other enhancements will create value—before expanding or embedding these capabilities in your operating model. We automate what’s transactional and create cross-functional teams to harness the ingenuity and innovation you’ll need to meet consumers’ changing demands.
How do we help? Our services.
Advanced Analytics
We help clients unleash advanced analytics on rich data to turn consumer insights into commercial excellence.
Consumer goods companies face increasing amounts of data, especially if they have access to transaction logs through syndicated data arrangements with retailers. This data can be a unique asset to generate value by way of more targeted product development, pricing, promotions, and marketing.
Our analytical experts have the knowledge and the practical experience to work with disparate data sources, generate relevant insights, and derive a rich fact base to support all key business decisions in the consumer goods industry.
What we do
Projects for clients often touch on the following topics:
- Insights-driven category strategy and assortment. Based on transaction or loyalty data, we conduct targeted data mining to help consumer goods companies make informed decisions about assortment management.
- Insights-driven pricing and promotions. To optimize shelf prices for profit and to get the most out of promotions, we offer our clients our proprietary Suite of tools, combining econometric modeling with heuristics and process management.
- Insights-driven marketing. To enable clients to make marketing investments where they really matter, we help them apply advanced analytics to marketing mix modeling and media planning.
Who we are
Our experts are linked through a global network, the Consumer and Marketing Analytics Center (CMAC). CMAC is anchored by a growing number of regional hubs and can be accessed by teams in any of Fijishi’s 16 offices worldwide.
Our growing global team of dedicated CMAC affiliates has successfully brought CMAC methodology to consumer goods clients in food & beverage, detergents, OTC, and cosmetics, covering topics from category strategy to pricing and promotions.
Beauty
The beauty industry is a dynamic space and the sector has experienced strong growth in the past few years, driven by consumers’ engagement in the category and unprecedented product and marketing innovation. We advise companies across the beauty ecosystem, from large, established companies and retailers to small, disruptive brands and contract manufacturers on how to navigate this shifting landscape and successfully position themselves in the category.
What we do
- Strategy and growth - We help set strategic direction and identify opportunities for growth. Our work spans corporate finance, corporate strategy, digital strategy, portfolio strategy, and risk management.
- Digital and analytics - We help clients unleash advanced analytics on rich data to turn consumer insights into commercial excellence. This data can be a unique asset to generate value through targeted product development, pricing, promotions, marketing, and supply-chain excellence. We also help beauty brands and retailers boost their e-commerce presence and digital marketing effectiveness.
- Operations - We develop distinctive operations strategies by optimizing supply chain and ensuring world-class performance within individual functional areas. Our work ranges from operations digitalization and next-generation procurement to product development and lifecycle strategy.
- Revenue-growth management - We guide clients in mastering the fundamentals of assortment, pricing, promotions, and trade investment. Our focus is on taking revenue-growth management (RGM) to the next level through strategic RGM, precision RGM, and RGM capability building at scale.
- Organization - We help maximize company and functional performance through optimal organizational structure, processes, and performance management. Our deep expertise in transformational change and capability building helps companies foster innovation and build the business models needed to sustain long-term impact.
- M&A - We partner with beauty companies to maximize the success of their end-to-end M&A activity through identifying complementary partnerships and integrating new businesses—including those with different business models and scale—into the organization.
- Private equity - We help private equity firms make better investment decisions in the beauty industry at every stage of the deal’s life cycle and build greater returns through active management of portfolio companies. We also advise on investment-firm strategy and development, creating value through improved performance.
Consumer Health
The consumer-health industry is booming, driven by an aging population, a proliferation of wellness-related products and services, burgeoning sources of health-related information, and consumers’ desire to control their health. However, an increasing number of smaller, niche players entering the market, digitization, price transparency, regulatory changes, and consumer value consciousness underline the need for change.
Consumer-health companies looking to keep up in this rapidly changing environment will need to adjust their innovation cycles and develop a deep understanding of their consumer base to create a unique value proposition and stand out from competitors. In many cases, companies need to extend beyond traditional barriers of products, services, and tech in order to provide solutions to—and remain relevant with—consumers. We help companies achieve increased growth and profitability by establishing a comprehensive perspective on the issues they are facing and collaboratively creating realizable solutions that account for the needs of their consumers.
What we do
- Strategy and growth - We help set the strategic direction and identify opportunities for growth, combining broad experience from the pharmaceutical lens and the consumer landscape. Our work spans corporate strategy, corporate finance, digital strategy, portfolio strategy, and risk management.
- Operations - We develop a distinctive operations strategy by optimizing supply chain and ensuring world-class performance within individual operational areas. Our work ranges from operations digitalization and next-generation procurement to product development and lifecycle strategy.
- Commercialization - We help define marketing strategies and commercialization approach to manage brands effectively, optimize spending effectiveness and in-store execution, drive innovation, and build world-class marketing and sales-force processes and capabilities.
- Organization - We help to maximize company and functional performance through optimal-organizational structure, performance management, and processes. Our deep expertise in transformational change and capability building helps companies foster innovation and build the business models needed to sustain long-term impact.
- Mergers & Acquisitions - We partner with consumer-health companies to maximize the success of their end-to-end M&A activity, which includes identifying complementary partnerships and integrating new businesses—including those with different business models and scale—into the organization.
- Advanced Analytics - We help companies unleash advanced analytics on rich data—including direct to consumer, pharmacies, purchasing pools, and wholesaler—to turn consumer insights into commercial excellence. This data can be a unique asset to generate value through targeted marketing, pricing, product development, and promotions.
Consumer portfolio, innovation, and design
Driving profitable growth at pace through innovation. Despite identifying it as their top lever for growth, many consumer companies find it challenging to get meaningful value from innovation. We work with clients to rethink innovation and R&D to deliver significant topline growth and margin. With the consumer at the center, we shape big ideas, drive speed and effectiveness, and build lasting capabilities to deliver exceptional value for our clients.
What we do
- Portfolio and innovation strategy - We partner with clients to identify distinctive opportunity spaces, shape winning concepts, and accelerate the path to launch supported by distinctive insights, design, and business-building capabilities.
- Digitally enabled innovation models - We build distinctive operating models that accelerate the path to market and increase success, using solutions to understand consumer sentiment; rapidly identify formulation and packaging opportunities; and manage the portfolio.
- Brand design to value - We build multi-year product pipelines for leading brands that include innovation, cost savings, and renovation improvements. We combine the multiple product goals of growth, cost savings and sustainability, removing silos and driving a step change in results.
Digital & Multichannel Excellence
We help clients set comprehensive digital strategies and marketing approaches that unlock the full potential of digital media.
We partner with consumer goods companies to embrace the opportunities afforded by new platforms, rethink the consumer engagement model, and improve marketing and sales performance. We combine Fijishi's expertise in strategy, marketing, and organization with leading-edge digital capabilities across the entire consumer packaged goods (CPG) business system.
What we do
Our teams support CPG companies in their efforts to derive competitive advantage and sustainable value from the digital revolution. We help our clients achieve these goals in three core areas:
- Digital marketing - Digital technology is fundamentally changing the relationship between brands and consumers. It brings unprecedented scale to interactivity, viral marketing, and consumer-generated content. Bridging the gap between statistical science and commercial craft, we help our clients understand consumers’ decision journeys across all touch points. We work with CPG companies to identify the key opportunities for each of their brands, and we help them deploy digital media in combination with traditional vehicles to create superior returns.
To pinpoint a client’s specific digital opportunities, we leverage a set of sophisticated, yet pragmatic tools. Applications include innovative market research, such as consumer decision journey analysis, to capture consumer behavior across segments and touch points, transactional analysis of clickstreams and online buzz, and Enhanced Marketing Mix Modeling.
To help clients measure the impact of digital media relative to traditional media on a like-for-like basis, we have created a proprietary metric called “Social Media GRPs.” Unlike most traditional marketing mix modeling approaches, our tools recognize the viral effect of social media, one of the most important digital touch points today. - Digital capabilities - We engage in proprietary research to identify the key strategic business opportunities that arise from the digital revolution for each CPG company. On this basis, we help clients understand the capabilities, processes, and organizational changes they need to reap the benefits of such developments. For instance, we monitor the evolution of the digital practices of leading CPGs continuously. Also, we help our clients run digital capability assessments and develop blueprints for e-commerce organizations that recognize the trilateral requirements of consumers, CPG companies, and retail partners.
- Multichannel sales - We help our clients use digital technology to accelerate sales growth across channels. This includes direct leverage, such as the development and deployment of e-commerce and CRM platforms, as well as indirect leverage, such as approaches to influence retailers’ online category management decisions. We work with our clients to develop superior channel strategies, but also to optimize individual commercial levers. Guiding questions include: What should the role of each channel be for different categories and regions? How can multichannel retailers counter the value proposition of pure online retailers? To what extent should pricing, promotion, and assortment management be differentiated across channels? How can CPGs collaborate with retailers to improve e-category management and e-shopper marketing?
Growth, Marketing & Sales
In more than 1,000 growth, marketing and sales studies conducted over the past five years, we have helped CPG clients shape their growth ambition, prioritize key vectors of profitable growth into an integrated growth strategy, and develop the necessary capabilities to execute effectively.
Our Approach
Our approach in CPG leverages a suite of proprietary assets to help clients with different priorities and growth horizons create a pragmatic picture of success, identify a broader set of growth opportunities, and facilitate optimal resource allocation and risk management.
Where to play
- Consumer understanding - We help clients understand current and future consumer segments, need states, and usage and purchase behaviors. Our proprietary Growth Maps approach leverages machine learning to provide a macro view of how consumers organize categories and a micro view of purchase decisions.
- Category and channel value pools - We provide a granular view of where value in a given category sits today and in the future across multiple dimensions, such as sub-category, channel and geography). Our proprietary analytics tool for value pools can be leveraged to rapidly provide insights tailored to individual clients.
- Competitive understanding - We help assess the competitive landscape, deep diving into the performance drivers of successful growth companies. We provide outside-in financial performance data and insights on more than 3.5 million private and public companies, leveraging 4.5 terabytes of proprietary data, while our winners analysis maps more than 350 consumer companies across categories to dissect and understand growth performance and drivers of CPG winners.
- Capabilities to win - We help identify the commercial capabilities most critical to execute a winning growth strategy, utilizing our proprietary industry benchmarking tool to outline best practices used by leading organizations and outline key next steps to close capability gaps.
How to win
Our research shows that companies growing along all three growth pathways are 97 percent more likely to outperform growth performance of comparable peers. Accordingly, we help our clients develop holistic growth strategies and optimally deploy resources across each.
- Expand the core - We help clients maximize their current business, such as strategy and capability development including marketing, sales channel, sales performance and revenue growth management.
- Innovate into adjacencies - We help clients strategically expand into adjacent categories, segments, and geographies.
- Ignite breakout businesses - We help clients evaluate and try new, disruptive business models to ignite growth beyond their core.
Operations
We help consumer-packaged-goods companies increase margins by achieving operational excellence while maintaining customer satisfaction.
What we do
In response to consumer demand and competitive pressure, consumer-packaged-goods companies are calling on their operations capabilities to do more with less. At the same time, operations need to stay agile to support innovation and manage complexity.
Our approach
We help our clients achieve these goals in many core areas, including the following:
- Operations strategy - We work with leading consumer-goods companies to define long-term operations-transformation journeys and help build strategies and organizations that lead to commercial growth.
- Operations digitization - Autonomous planning, digital procurement, and Industry 4.0 applications create significant opportunity to achieve the next horizon of operations excellence. We help organizations align their operating models, capabilities, and culture to the digital age to ensure a successful and sustainable digital transformation.
- Complexity optimization - We help companies master complexity by distinguishing the “good complexity” that excites customers and drives incremental sales, from the “bad complexity” that stands only to increase inventory and make the supply chain less agile, as a result, driving growth through a combination of “market back” processes—such as assortment—and supply forward transformation—such as supply-chain optimization.
- Design to value and growth - We help clients develop authentic, human-focused, and charismatic products, services, and experiences. Our approach to product development integrates market analytics, competitive intelligence, and an understanding of suppliers with deep consumer insights and design capabilities.
- Next-generation procurement - To offset the effects of commoditization, we support our clients with broad category strategies that take a total-cost-of-ownership perspective to sourcing. Our offerings include risk management, lean sourcing, and value-chain optimization in collaboration with suppliers.
- Manufacturing and sourcing - Our manufacturing experts work with consumer-goods companies to build manufacturing networks that are flexible, responsive, innovative, and resilient. We empower clients to take advantage of new technology and digital capabilities to achieve higher performance at a lower cost with more agility.
- Customer-centric and omnichannel supply chains - We help clients optimize the flow of goods through segmentation, improved planning, adoption of lean principles, and increased supply chain collaboration. Our distinctive approach to shaping customer-centric and omnichannel supply chains helps clients achieve higher service levels, leaner inventories, and lower costs.
- Zero-based budgeting - We leverage our zero-based budgeting 360 tool along with the Anaplan planning solution to drive fast, agile, at-scale, and sustainable productivity improvements for our clients.
Organization
Helping consumer-goods companies redesign their operating model, and develop the capabilities to transform their organization.
For decades, the consumer-goods industry’s value creation model has allowed for global expansion and produced excellent results. Today, however, the value creation model is challenged by disruptive trends such as changes in the competitive landscape, significant shifts in consumer behavior, and even global pandemics that threaten every area of the business. Consumer-goods companies need to be able to quickly transform their organization to remain competitive and achieve top-line growth.
We help consumer-goods companies design and deliver holistic organizational transformations by adjusting their operating model, defining clear roles and responsibilities, fostering faster decision-making, and implementing new agile ways of working. We leverage a proven approach, proprietary tools, and a deep expertise in both organizational transformation and the consumer-goods industry to ensure a rapid transformation with short- and long-term impact.
What we do
- Operating model transformation - We help clients make fundamental decisions about the design of their organization, including enterprise-level structure, functional structure, roles and responsibilities, management processes, and decision rights. By aligning structure to strategy and implementing agile ways of working, businesses can quickly adjust priorities and adapt the organization in response to any change.
- Change management - The overall transformation journey is supported by a dedicated change management and communication process to engage and educate key stakeholders systematically across the company. Our experts work with executives to conduct quantitative diagnostics, benchmark aspects of the company’s organizational health against peers, establish concrete change initiatives based on proven recipes, and design a transformation approach that aligns the organization around targeted priorities.
- Capability building - We help organizations build and adapt the skills, mindsets, and behaviors required to sustain the long-term impact of the organizational change. We provide top-level client-learning programs to strengthen leadership skills, while our capability-building programs provide turnkey approaches and consist of complete training modules to help transform the organization.
- Merger management - We partner with consumer-goods companies to maximize the success of their end-to-end M&A activity by tailoring our market-leading M&A blueprint for strategy, deal identification and execution, and merger integration methodology to address the specific objectives of each merger.
Strategy
We help clients achieve sustainable performance gains by optimizing corporate strategy, category strategies, and financial productivity. In the past, margin management in the consumer goods industry was tantamount to capturing raw material price declines and introducing ever more profitable products. But increasing competitive intensity, price pressure, and hybrid consumption have put an end to this era. To create sustainable value in today’s environment, consumer goods companies need disciplined strategic planning and focused execution, mid-term as well as long-term. We support leading players in their efforts to gain sustainable supremacy.
What we do
Our teams support clients in their efforts to create value now and in the future. Specifically, we work with consumer goods companies to define, review, and optimize strategies at all organizational levels, from the corporate center to individual business units and specific categories. Our global team also provides independent, strategic advice on finance and value creation. We work with clients on topics such as valuation, transaction support, capital markets, treasury, financial analysis and modeling, and strengthening the finance function.
Depending on the challenge, solutions may include the following:
- Corporate strategy/growth - Top-line growth is a key driver of total return to shareholders. We help clients identify and analyze their key drivers of growth relative to competitors. We engage with them on the outlook for future growth in light of their current portfolio, and we help them determine strategic actions to improve their growth trajectory. We also help clients understand and reap the benefits of scale.
- Category strategy - We help manufacturers determine the optimal category strategy for their portfolio. Guiding questions include: What categories are most attractive? What are the category dynamics in these categories? How can further growth in developed categories be achieved? Our teams work closely leveraging big data to build a market structure that explains the drivers of consumer choice using all possible variables.
- Corporate finance/M&A - We help clients analyze and understand their performance in capital markets, and we work with them to devise a course of actions to improve their returns in capital markets. We also support our clients at all stages along the continuum of a transaction. Additionally, we help companies optimize the performance of their finance function.
- Risk management - Consumer companies are operating in an environment that is characterized by volatile commodity cost, changes in consumer confidence, and many other dynamic factors. We help clients decide how to operate in this environment and hedge the risk of future challenges.