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Disruptive Innovation in

Consumer Goods

Building transformational capabilities

for the digital era

Istanbul, June, 2017

D i s r u p t i v e I n n o v a t i o n i nC o n s u m e r G o o d s | 2

Disruptive Innovation in Consumer Goods

Published by: Value Gene Consulting Group

Zorlu Center Teras Evler D Blok, No: 248, 34340 Istanbul, Turkey June 2017

Written and edited by: Okan Akgün, Ethemcan Bakırlıoğlu, Fırat Şık

www.valuegeneconsulting.com

Copyright © Value Gene Consulting Group All rights reserved

http://www.valuegeneconsulting.com/

Contents

Executive Summary .................................................................................... 1

1. Introduction ...................................................................................... 3

2. What Makes ‘Digital Transformation’ Critical in Consumer Goods .... 6

2.1 Customer Pull ................................................................................... 9

2.2 Technology Push ............................................................................ 10

2.3 Economic Benefits .......................................................................... 12

3. Digital Transformation in Consumer Goods Landscape .................. 14

3.1 B2C Consumer Goods Applications ............................................... 14

3.2 B2B Consumer Goods Applications................................................ 16

4. Key pillars for successful digital transformation strategy ................. 19

5. Conclusion ..................................................................................... 23

Authors ..................................................................................................... 24

About Value Gene Consulting Group ........................................................ 25

D i s r u p t i v e I n n o v a t i o n i n C o n s u m e r G o o d s | 1

Executive Summary

The world is rapidly digitalizing and businesses are facing crossroads. Developing technology removes the borders and digital opportunities create a new ecosystem of increasing economic growth driven by more efficient processes, better resource allocation and decreasing cost-to-serve throughout value chains. Customer experience journeys transform and shift towards digital channels. This trend and new business ecosystem force companies to internalize digitalization efforts and explore its benefits.

Once a digital disruption is put into practice by a business, the other players in the industry will sooner be affected strongly. In a short span of time, the distinction between early movers and laggards become clear. This inflection point within ‘Digital Adaptation Curve’ represents the moment at which status-quo defenders start experiencing customer loss, revenue decrease and challenges due to higher cost base and weaker product/service capabilities relative to the competitors. Kodak, for instance, is one of the best examples of such washouts in the history. The company, once a giant, tumbled down rapidly after failing in adaptation to digital camera disruption. Disruptors and early movers, on the other side, easily extract quick wins and long-terms benefits from digitalization followed by bounce in revenues.

Digitalization of business environment is driven by three main pillars: customer pull, technology push and digital economic benefits. As digital tools penetrate more into individuals’ lifestyles, people begin spending more of their time in digital world, resulting in formation of a new commercial universe with more agile, less-costly and transparent operations. Thus, the customer pulls the commercial entities towards utilization of digital tools. On the other hand, technology is unstoppable. It advances and pushes businesses to realize its value propositions. Lastly, of course, those digitalization efforts deserve significant economic benefits. Digitalizing companies enjoy good results in P&Ls and high employee/customer satisfaction. Besides, digitalized world offers economic value not only for companies and businesses but also for societies, by improving people’s quality of life and providing equitable wealth growth.

In consumer goods landscape, various parts of the value chain are likely to be transformed by shifts in this new environment to stay competitive. Digitalization offers unique opportunities for consumer companies, supporting them through their operations from production stage to aftersales services. Customer experience and differentiation being top strategic priorities, consumer goods players expect that digitalization will help them sell profitably, quickly and with superior customer satisfaction. In B2C side of consumer industry, consumers seek rapid access to content that is personally relevant to their interests, accessible anytime and on the device they prefer. In order to achieve a decent response to customers’ expectations, B2C consumer goods companies should develop best practices through different pillars; organizational structure, company culture, and business technology must all be aligned in service of customers. On B2B side, there are more decision


makers and influencers involved in final purchasing decisions than B2C counterparts. Besides, B2B buyers have more sophisticated and customized expectations from products and services. Therefore, digital transformation in a B2B consumer goods company may require more tailored and unique solutions from distributor management portals to closed and product-specific trade networks.

Digitalization in consumer goods industry is an innovative and rewarding process. However, such transformation should be conducted in a structured framework specific to the company. In general, a digital strategy is developed firstly by measuring existing digital capabilities, assessing the impact of digitization trends on companies’ end-to-end value chains and detailing an implementation plan for each strategic pillar. All parts of the value chain are diagnosed and digitalization initiatives become clearer for supply chain, operations, R&D, marketing, sales, after-sales and support functions. Lastly, digital enablers and infrastructure are implemented.


1. Introduction

The business environment is being dominated by digital rapidly. Many successful companies internalized digitalization efforts but its benefits are not yet explored by many others. Especially telecom and finance industry players are leading the way in digital transformation. However, companies should extend the scope of their digital agenda by increasing the use of digital tools in daily operations in order to be among high performers. This can be achieved either by rapid implementation of initiatives or by allocating the company resources primarily for digital work. Thus, digitalized business processes result in significant improvement in bottom-line by leading to increase in revenues and decrease in costs.

In this context, it is obvious that the digital revolution changed the ways to do business. Once companies realized this fact, implementing new business processes and strengthening the old ones became a difficult trade-off for them. Many choose to digitalize the old ones; however, industry and company characteristics play an important role over this decision. For example, while building an e-commerce network has become critical for retailers; big data analytics has been most likely to benefit telecom companies and banks. This transition is mainly driven by customer related needs as to better target them and differentiate in the existing market.

Due to recent rapid technological advancements, today’s business world witnesses a power shift from companies to customers. The business landscape is affected by companies with strong emphasis on innovation and delivering customer-centric products to guarantee perfect customer experience. Competition due to disruptive strategies from new digital entrants create struggle for many traditional players. On the other hand, once adapted, these traditional players are relatively more advantageous in this tough competition as they have more mature operational strategies, risk management and cost structure.

For traditional players, the real issue is low entry barriers arising as a fundamental result of digitalization. The implementation easiness of digital assets creates an inviting environment for new entrants. Disintegrated value chains enable new entrants to implement low-cost structures that lead them to catch up and even surpass traditional players. Thus, the terms of competition are redefined in this new era by taking into account several factors including: A less-than-stellar transparency in prices leading to inevitable commoditization and driving profit margins down; decrease in labor and transaction costs, so the competition increases as a monopolistic structure arises in the market and, most importantly, the markets are integrated by globalization. Consequently, companies are forced by digitalization not only to be more attentive to customer journeys but also to establish a dynamic environment where inputs from customers are instantly and continuously analyzed.


In order to guarantee the proficiency in digitalization, two concerns arise: timing and pace. Marketplace is massively changed by digital startups so incumbents should adjust their traditional approaches to more disruptive business models. Digitalization helps companies to be more agile and up-to-date while improving the company agendas. Among many digitalization elements, big data analytics is one of the keys to increase the decision’s accuracy and ease the decision making. The effective use of big data analytics enables companies to reach higher revenues. Despite the obvious benefits, recent researches reveal another picture: there is still low utilization of digital opportunities.

On the other side, customer experience journeys are affected by digitalization trends for several years.

Exhibit 1: Customer experience in consumer goods industries witnesses an obvious shift from traditional activities to digital journeys

As digital technologies penetrate more in individuals’ lifestyles, customers start utilizing more from digital tools in order to get to know a product, compare it to the others, purchase it and receive customer services. Thus, digital channels start offering an agile and low-cost environment throughout their product/service journey. However, as the shift in customer lifestyle from traditional activities to digital journeys becomes evident, the companies, on the other hand, are forced to build digital operating models in order to survive in the new digital ecosystem; and innovative cross-channel experiences are still a pain point for consumer goods companies despite this change. Therefore, companies need to embrace a different approach in dealing with the customer decision journey by adopting the speed that digitization delivers. In this context, digitalization offers unique opportunities especially for consumer goods companies.


Exhibit 2: Through digitalization, consumer goods companies can generate new revenue streams and create more value

Those value propositions take shape under the roof of four main digital pillars: automation to replace labor with technology, connectivity through customers, suppliers and colleagues, innovation for business models, products and operations and rapid decision-making capability supported by big data and advanced analytics.

In today’s business ecosystem, digitalization is vital in order to remain competitive, stay at the leading edge and become effective. A company’s efficiency and effectiveness can easily deteriorate in case of failing to adapt to constantly changing digital environment. Besides, it could even result in the defeat of longstanding, rooted companies. Under these competitive and tough circumstances, this document aims to explain utilization of digitalization for both B2B and B2C in Consumer Goods industry.


2. What Makes ‘Digital Transformation’ Critical in Consumer Goods

In various industries, digitalization has completely altered business models, but, without question, especially consumer goods industries are exposed to the strongest impact. The most remarkable examples of this situation can be classified into three principle pillars:

• New digital distribution channels and customer/company interaction types

• Transformation of value chains • Redefinition of competitive environment and revenue sources through

technology

For new company/customer interaction, most of the efforts are focused around removal of intermediaries between customers and service providers. On the other side, applying entrepreneurial and innovative approaches changed the competitive landscape in consumer goods industries. Lastly, all parts of consumer goods value chain have been affected by digital solutions such as ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) tools, new payment systems and daily life-easing consumer applications.

Several examples can be given to changing consumer goods business models as a result of digitalization.

Exhibit 3: Digitalization has completely altered business models in numerous industries

Those examples indicate that the entire industry will sooner be affected strongly once an effective and disruptive digitalization step is taken by a player.


Digital adaptation curve includes five stages. The first stage is “Emerging trends” which is an initial sense-check era. It is followed by the “Disruption by innovative start-ups” stage during which those trends become comprehensive digital business solutions launched by one of the innovative market players. Then, the industry is disrupted by those digital solutions changing consumer goods landscape. Afterwards, “Early adopters” embrace the disruption or implement a similar digital proposition to their business operations. At first glance, these new trends are not seen as a big threat to the incumbents, who are big-scaled traditional players. Some of those long-standing players with innovation-driven culture, on the other side, start adoption of emerging digital trends early in this phase by performing a comprehensive impact analysis. These long-standing early adopters, of course, enjoy the benefit from these digital initiatives more than other players thanks to their scale and expertise. Lastly, there is the “Mainstreamization” phase including an inflection point after which adopters and status-quo defenders are separated clearly within the market. In consumer goods industry, incumbents still have time to adjust their business models to today’s digitalized consumers; however, laggards, if precautions are not taken immediately, will certainly fail once the industry ecosystem is disrupted by the adopters.

Exhibit 4: Digital adaptation curve includes five stages

Many successful companies could not achieve maintaining their top position when confronted with digitalizing market and technology challenges despite the advantage of well-acknowledged brands behind. Kodak, Blackberry and Blockbuster are very eye-opening examples among these companies. Kodak, for example, indeed tried to transform its business to digital photography from analog film manufacturing in 2000s. However, huge change needed in cost structure and organization creates destructive challenges for the company while trying to adjust its business model to the ‘new normal’. Kodak case is a critical experience for consumer goods companies, showing that not only timely execution but also perfect change management is needed in digitalizing businesses.


Exhibit 5: Kodak could not keep pace with digital camera disruption and failed along with analog camera market

Digitalization brings shifts in the value chain models and all stages of company operations. This disruptive shift is likely to transform almost all industries and companies trying to stay competitive or even alive; and this shift is generally attributed to three main pillars that support digitalization and one another: customer pull, technology push and economic benefits.

Exhibit 6: There are 3 main forces reinforcing digitalization


2.1 Customer Pull

Consumers are already fully adapted to the digital environment. They naturally expect to be always connected, are willing to share personal data, and are more likely to trust referrals from their closest friends than well-known brands.

Exhibit 7: In 2020, Gen C -powerful new force in consumer culture- will have grown up in digital world

As a new powerful force in consumer behavior, Gen C (for ‘connection’) describes people who care deeply about creation, connection, and community. Gen C does not characterize an age group but identifies an attitude and mindset defined by key characteristics such as high technology usage, will to share personal data and tendency to online purchases. Gen C’s familiarity with technology, reliance on mobile communications, and desire to remain in contact with large networks of people will transform how we work and consume. Approximately 65%-70% of individuals fewer than 35 are acknowledged as Gen C, and this percentage is expected to converge to 90-95% in the next 10 years.

This generation shift, for instance, has become obvious in US population in recent years according to the survey conducted by eMarketer.


Exhibit 8: US population spends more time and is triggered more by the digital world

US population started spending more time in digital world primarily for social networking and online purchases especially by using mobile phones. In 2016, 65% of US population purchased from online channels at least one time and 65% of those individuals carried out mobile transactions at least one time. These survey results prove that so-called ‘Gen C’ has already started to shift overall consumer behavior in US.

2.2 Technology Push

In addition to the pull factor from consumers, digital technology itself continues to expand its influence. The infrastructure backbone of the digital world is bringing affordable connectivity to billions of consumers. In parallel, low-cost connected devices are being deployed in every industry, and cloud computing, and the vast information-processing machinery it requires, is developing quickly.

Exhibit 9: Number of connected devices across the World is expected to reach 20 million in 2020


Advancements in technology pull the price of digital tools down and push them into the markets, resulting in disruptions in consumer habits, company processes and market dynamics. Regarding the Gartner’s forecasts about number of connected devices by 2020, these disruptive developments will play a significant role in changing the businesses in the near future.

Exhibit 10: Global markets are dominated by technology companies that rapidly change how we consume

Uber launched in 2009 with an emphasis on black car service in major metro areas like New York City. It allows people to push a button and have a ride sent to them. The drivers are regular people who use their own vehicles and get paid a percentage of the fare. The company has disrupted the industry by offering something that’s cheaper, easier and modernized. Instead of hailing a taxi from the sidewalk, searching your pockets for a few dollars, and then debating on how much to tip, the passenger simply presses a button on an app. All of the payment takes place through the application by using the automated account that eliminates the need of a physical credit card.

Airbnb is an online marketplace and hospitality service, enabling people to lease or rent short-term lodging. The company disrupts the hospitality industry by mainly enabling clients with limited budgets for hotel accommodations or those want to make their event more family-friendly to choose where they stay. Guests use star ratings to rate features of their stay, e.g., cleanliness, location, and communication, while both guests and hosts may provide other information about aspects of the stay, including personal comments. Thus, a more transparent marketplace is obtained.


2.3 Economic Benefits

Lastly, the economic benefits to be captured through digitalization are real. The companies that successfully implement digital strategies, digital culture, digital operating models and digital organizations experience significant top/bottom-line improvement, create more value to shareholders and perform better at creating customer satisfaction.

Exhibit 11: Companies with established digital culture and capabilities turn in stronger financial performance (Analysis for B2B companies)

Exhibit 12: Digital themes do not have economic benefits only for consumer products businesses but also for societies

In consumer goods industry, products evolve into services, and services into experiences, supported by data serving as the backbone of their delivery. Creating digital revenue models is an opportunity in an


environment where revenue could potentially be decoupled from output and closely linked to sustainable outcomes for individuals and society. In this context, digital themes help companies and governments drive a progress towards realizing societal benefits such as improvement in people’s quality of life supported by increase in equitable economic growth. Omni-channel retailing creates a low-cost commercial environment when themes such as digital operating models, digital customer services, digitalized logistics services and customer data flow bring strong economic benefits onto the table by removing inefficiencies in business processes.


3. Digital Transformation in Consumer Goods Landscape

From supply chain management to customer retention-increasing activities, many different implementation methods for digital solutions exist through all stages of the value chain. On top of the concepts in this framework, comprehension of current trends in the digitalization universe is also a pre-requisite to develop a sound digital-transformation strategy. In this context, both B2B and B2C consumer goods players look to digital to help them sell profitably, quickly and with superior customer satisfaction. For those companies, customer experience and differentiation are top strategic priorities.

Exhibit 13: Various sectors are likely to be transformed by shifts in these new value chain models to stay competitive

3.1 B2C Consumer Goods Applications

The broad strategic priorities of B2C decision-makers are generally improving the differentiation in the market, enhancing customer experience and growing revenues. Besides, for those companies, key drivers of digital transformation are generally profitability, customer satisfaction, and shorter go-to-market processes. Furthermore, rapidly digitalizing B2C market ecosystem and competitive landscape -getting more and more difficult day by day- force those companies to bring digital capabilities into their business models as soon as possible.


Exhibit 14: Digital business solutions become every-day-practices for B2C consumer companies of digital age

LEGO Group carries out the development, production, marketing and sale of play materials, providing toys as well as teaching materials for children in approximately 130 countries. After 1992, the group has suffered a steady decline until 2004 when it was close to bankruptcy. Reaching an inflection point, LEGO started a digital transformation program focusing on new revenue sources coming from movies, mobile games and mobile applications. The company created a web-based 3D design tool to establish a collaboration environment in which design capabilities are handed over by fans. LEGO obtained satisfactory results, such as steady growth and increasing profitability, after 2005 from digital transformation.

L’oréal launched an online cosmetics brand, EM Cosmetic, and commercializes it only through digital channels. The company carries out all marketing and sales activities of EM through online platforms while selling other products either by traditional channels or by external e-commerce partners. The main campaign for EM Cosmetics brand recognition was led by Michelle Phan, a YouTube beauty blogger whose videos have achieved some 1 billion views on YouTube; and the brand has gained a strong customer base sooner than expected.

Gatorade recently created the Gatorade Mission Control a room that could be considered as a war room for monitoring the brand in real-time across social media. The room features six big monitors with five seats for Gatorade’s marketing team to track a number of data visualizations and dashboards also available on to employees on their desktops. The monitors visualize the tweets that are relevant to Gatorade and the company tracks terms relating to its brand, including competitors, as well as its athletes and sports nutrition-related topics; they also measure blog


conversations across a variety of topics and show how hot those conversations are. The company also runs detailed sentiment analysis around key topics and product and campaign launches.

Diageo has developed printed sensor tags, with ID codes specific to each product, those can be read through a smartphone. Each bottle serves as a medium of interaction with consumers, as it delivers digital content to consumers via smart-phones. On the other side, each bottle can be tracked as it moves through the supply chain, from distillery to the point of consumption; and each product can be authenticated.

3.2 B2B Consumer Goods Applications

In B2B consumer goods environment, there are more decision makers and influencers involved in final purchasing decisions than B2C counterparts. A wide range of products and service specifications, and many competing sales channels -both traditional and digital- creates a complex market ecosystem. B2B customers can also have different and specific needs at different stages of the customer experience journey.

Exhibit 15: Endeavour to complete digitalization in B2B have been made by market leaders in various industries

For example, Coca Cola Amatil (CCA) in Australia, one of the world's five major Coca-Cola bottlers, has developed myCca, a fully mobile application for shops and markets. The application provide targeted insights about the shops, informs the markets/shops about order delivery and visit times; and


reminds payment due dates, enabling the shop owners to stay updated about different aspects of ongoing commercial relationship.

The company also launched the iPad application SAM in March 2014. Reps use the SaM app to plan the best route for customer visits, place orders in real time and model the impact of point-of-sale displays on revenue. Reps have their iPads connected to the network, so they can place orders, check contact center interactions and review sales in real time; and spend less time on administrative workload. On the other side, the back office analyses the data stream in order to measure the KPIs and reveal promotional opportunities. Routes are planned efficiently and orders are transmitted in real time. The app saves about five minutes on each sales call and enables sales reps to become merchandising experts rather than being order takers. Besides, the reps love their new iPad app because it makes it easier for them to do their job and it boosts sales, bringing them more sales commission. Thus, employee satisfaction has increased and sales staff turnover has decreased. In addition to benefits for the company, store owners are also delighted when their CCA rep can show them how the store can make more money on an iPad.

Nestlé Schöller, ice-cream brand of Nestlé, is another B2B digitalization example for consumer goods industry. The company launched a recommendation engine, analyzing the purchase behavior of customers and suggesting alternative products to shops and markets. The engine leads the shop owner to increase online purchases, increases cross/up sell and provides marketing instruments like personalized newsletters.

In USA, with over 200 trading partners, P&G was in need of an agile and robust B2B solution for its trading partner community. In order to meet the increased demand for reliability, flexibility, visibility, and control of order sourcing, it was critical to adopt a solution that could provide full electronic trading partner connectivity. With transactions coming from so many different sources, P&G needed to automate and streamline as much as possible in order to reduce error and increase efficiencies in file transfer. Need to allow P&G employees to focus on value-added services rather than manually intervening to facilitate transaction flow and error correction.

As a solution, P&G consolidated diverse B2B communications into a single framework, allowing the company to easily and efficiently onboard and manage its trading partners and providing a seamless transition for partners, with no downtime. The platform has also improved data flow that keeps partner profiles in sync no matter where they are located, and reduces maintenance overhead. Thus, the company gained a robust and high visibility data flow maintaining efficiencies and partner relationships.

Tayto Group, UK’s 3rd largest snack food producer, offers a wide range of snack foods under several brands. The company has grown through acquisitions and has a number of disparate systems used by its distributors and key accounts. Hence, there were challenges such as moving all the


trading divisions to a single commercial entity, “Tayto Group” and migration of trading partners with multiple trading entities into a single system under the same commercial terms. As a solution, Tayto developed a web portal / an online hosted solution that is tailored for each user (distributors, key accounts) based on their specific needs and enables them to view and access documents sent electronically between one another. (E.g. online-orders, receipts, etc.) Thus, the company obtained single entity with a single trading platform and having a single entry and exit point to enable electronic trading with the distributors and key accounts.


4. Key pillars for successful digital transformation strategy

Exhibit 16: Digital Transformation is a long, demanding but highly rewarding process

‘The Digital Transformer’ is a framework measuring the impact of digitization trends on companies’ end-to-end value chains, determining how their strategies need to evolve in rapidly digitalizing business ecosystem, and identifying the capabilities they need in order to outperform in modern competitive landscape. The design of these capabilities is generally oriented to customer/industry needs and unique to each company. In this context, Value Gene Consulting helps clients building those digital capabilities and works alongside clients on the key processes, systems, skills, tools and organization enabling them to gain essential advantage in an increasingly digitized world.

Exhibit 17: A number of strategic questions need to be answered before starting this process


While building a digital transformation strategy, the first step is to reveal how the client’s current digital capabilities compare to international industry standards. Following this diagnosis phase, Value Gene Consulting help clients establishing a clear, actionable, and quantified perspective on how they should develop digital capabilities to enhance customer intimacy, innovate in products/services, and digitize their processes. As a result, based on a clear view of the client’s digital diagnosis results, a collaborative work environment is established with the client in order to understand the goals and identify the capabilities required to achieve them. The resulting road map details the skills, processes, systems, operating model, and products/services that will be needed.

Exhibit 18: Key Questions and Key Activities for Digital Sales & Marketing

Value Gene Consulting helps clients creating value from information available throughout the company by using data sources, insights, customer value management and relevant technologies; and supports the client while identifying and developing digital marketing capabilities. Lastly, the client’s sales capabilities are reflected into digital channels, thereby increasing both share and relevance to their customers.


Exhibit 19: Key Questions and Key Activities for Digital Innovation and R&D

Developing new or adapting current product/service value propositions for the digital world is of crucial importance for consumer companies. In this context, digitalization in business model innovation and R&D covers dimensions such as product/service characteristics, customer acquisition and care concepts, and communication and loyalty approaches. Based on a clear understanding of the client’s current positioning, customers’ changing needs, and the competitive landscape, Value Gene Consulting helps the client determine the right responses to the evolving ecosystem.

Exhibit 20: Key Questions and Key Activities for Digital Operations

Value Gene Consulting helps clients establishing an end-to-end supply chain perspective by linking demand-side activities driven by the digitized customer interface with the supply side of their business, and realizing a seamless integration of ERP, manufacturing execution, and procurement


systems. This phase of transformation generally requires developing capabilities to translate real-time market demand into operational requirements.

Exhibit 21: Key Questions and Key Activities for Enablers & Infrastructure

Digital enablers and infrastructure make employees more effective by using digital tools and increase their workplace satisfaction, decreasing turnover rates within the company. On the other side, digitalizing the shared services (e.g. HR, finance and accounting, controlling, legal, procurement, etc…) creates an effective, paperless and automatized work environment.

Exhibit 22: Value Gene Consulting Group can deliver a turnkey digital transformation solution from developing digital strategy to defining a digital roadmap


5. Conclusion

Consequently, it is obvious that digitalization has become a vital part of many industries and it already shifted the environment in several businesses. A new generation of customers rapidly pulls what unstoppable technology pushes into the markets and digital business capabilities become a must-have for companies in order to extract economic value. Those who adapt themselves to the ‘new normal’ start enjoying its benefits by winning at different areas of the business. Moreover, the laggards of digital adaptation lose their competitive power and tumble down as early movers and adopters disrupt their ecosystem.

In consumer goods industry, digitalization initiatives differ among B2B and B2C companies. From supply chain management to customer retention-increasing activities, many different implementation methods for digital solutions with different value propositions and benefits exist through all stages of the value chain. Customer satisfaction, profitability and shorter go-to-market processes come to the forefront for B2C companies while adopting digital opportunities into their business, whereas customer-oriented and more sophisticated digital solutions are more beneficial for B2B companies.

Digital transformation is a complex process that fills many business leaders with uncertainty. It is critical that leaders fight through that uncertainty, ask right questions and take timely steps to implement the culture, processes, and technology that will enable their business to compete in the modern marketplace. Besides, to be among the successful and game-changing cases of digitalization implementations, companies must develop a mechanism for efficient internal planning. In this context, ‘Digital Transformer’ can help companies to have an overview of existing solutions and identify the most relevant ones. In light of all these visions, a company should set its digital roadmap and strategy through three phases: diagnostic, analysis & value proposition definition and implementation.


Authors

OKAN AKGÜN

Partner

[email protected]

ETHEMCAN BAKIRLIOGLU

Principal

[email protected]

FIRAT ŞIK

Consultant

[email protected]


About Value Gene Consulting Group

Value Gene Consulting Group is a boutique and independent consulting firm offering strategic business solutions to achieve big, rapid, sustainable, continuously improving results. We guide and advise out strategic partners, C-Level executives, in mastering their business challenges around various subjects and industries. We drive change in the best interest of our clients and corresponding stakeholders rooting from the fact based quantitative and qualitative analysis.

Our clients’ arising needs in an increasingly challenging business environment have caused traditional dynamics to change in the industries, and only those companies with sound strategy and decision-making capabilities can achieve long lasting success. Helping them to confidently set direction and make well-informed decisions requires unique skills, particularly the ability to connect analytics understanding to actionable business insight.

As a boutique management consulting company with an enthusiastic team of consultants previously experienced in top strategy consulting companies, we highly anticipate the significance of decision making and result-oriented approach in business management. Our “boutique service principle” offer our clients better responsiveness, long-term dedication of our team and high-quality advice with direct involvement of our senior team in our day-to-day work where we fully concentrate on the needs of our partners and their business. We generate more than 80% of our business from clients with whom we have long standing relationships. We pursue our goal to “grow together” with strong ownership from every team member at every level of our organization.

Our consulting team, hiring only top educated and internationally experienced team members, aims for the best deliverable for the clients. Ensuring more senior involvement than any other player in the industry, Value Gene Consulting Group produces day-one applicable results. Deep subject expertise, matching with the pioneering industry knowledge, our team is providing impact and quality work satisfying all stakeholders/parties. As measured by our ability to maintain longstanding client relationships, ensuring client responsiveness and dedication, Value Gene has separated from the other players in the industry by delivering a content driven insight that our clients look for from their strategic advisor.

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