Advising a major FMCG company for optimizing product

portfolio

by

Dhruv Singla

18P080

Management Development Institute

Gurgaon 122 007

June, 2019
Advising a major FMCG company for optimizing product
portfolio

by

Dhruv Singla

Under the guidance of

Shri Zeeshan Zaman

Project Leader
Bain Capability Network

Management Development Institute

Gurgaon 122 007

June, 2019
 ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my project guide and mentor Mr. Zeeshan Zaman. This
project would not have been possible without his constant support and motivation. He not only provided
me with information and resources essential for the project but also provided me with opportunities to
learn and experience more. I’m indebted to him for his constant support towards my efforts and providing
feedback as and when required to help me improve.

I would also like to acknowledge the support provided by the Bain Brand Accelerator team for sparing
time from his busy schedule to help me with my final presentation.

I also wish to thank Bain Capability Network, for providing me the opportunity to work on such a
challenging project, which was an excellent learning experience for me.

Last but not the least; I would like to thank our esteemed institute, Management Development Institute,
Gurgaon, for providing all the necessary support, without which this project would have remained an
unfulfilled dream. I would also like to thank the institute and the entire faculty for the valuable education
and knowledge they have imparted to me over the last year and also for helping me learn and appreciate
what working in teams is all about.
 Table of Contents

 Acknowledgement ……………………………………………………………………. 4
 Executive summary…………………………………………………………………….. 6
 Literature review ………………………………………………………………………. 7
 Method …………………………………………………………………………………. 8
 Results ………………………………………………………………………………….. 9
 References ……………………………………………………………………………… 9
 Executive Summary
Bain & Company is an American global management consulting firm headquartered in Boston,
Massachusetts. It provides advisory services to businesses, nonprofit organizations, and
governments, and is one of the Big Three strategy consulting firms. Bain & Company has helped
several companies gain long term results find value across boundaries and develop strategic
insights. With a vast product and services portfolio, it has worked along various business
operating in industries like oil and gas, retail, technology, media and others.
The BCN is an offshore group supporting Bain’s offices worldwide in various types of projects
and providing shared services for the global system. BCN plays an important role in supporting
Bain's practices. The firm has developed the following “Practice Areas” to serve the varying
needs of its increasingly diverse multinational and local client base:
1. Performance Improvement: Works with clients across industries and sectors to reach
full potential by benchmarking against best performers. It helps clients identify focus
areas and suggest avenues for cost reduction.

2. Telecom – Media – Technology (TMT): Creating global insights and a long-term vision
to help telecom, media and technology companies to compete and thrive in a dynamic
industry. Key market dynamics in low cost smartphones space and its implications for
OEMs.

3. Financial Services: Serving all major areas such as banking, insurance and wealth
management. Worldwide retail banking loyalty study of trends across ~15 global
markets. Changing dynamics of banking landscape in Asian markets.

4. Private Equity: Working on some of the largest and complex private equity deals across
the globe. Developed a sector screening tool for a US based mid cap PE fund. Identified
top ~15 sectors from a list of >500 sectors & developed investment thesis for the sectors.

5. Strategy: This division helps companies achieve their full potential by working across
organizational areas. It is divided further into:
a) Sustained value creators: Companies that create sustained values over a long
period. Founder's Mentality is a competitive advantage, might be underutilized and
under-appreciated.
b) Developing Market 100: A global growth initiative partnering with companies in
developing markets as they journey towards leadership. Address challenges that these
companies face. Engage through high priority relationship featuring flexible working
models and IP.

6. Macro Trends: Developing Bain's insights about global macroeconomics, macro social
trends & geopolitics as they impact the results of our clients.
 Bain Brand Accelerator
From brand perception to supply chain efficiency—not to mention pricing, product innovation
and, of course, assessing customer needs and behaviors—consumer products companies confront
a long list of things they must get right. Add retail consolidation, digitalization and the race to
enter emerging markets, and the challenge intensifies. Bain has worked with 90% of the 25
largest global consumer products companies, completing thousands of projects over the past 10
years, helping to increase profits and build sustained value.

Bain works with consumer products companies around the world to:

 Design repeatable growth models and innovation pipelines that generate new products with
higher potential and lower risks of failure
 Artfully manage brand portfolios—defining optimal brand and product portfolio roles, winning
strategies, investment levels and profit expectations
 Accelerate brand growth, even in slow categories in developed markets, using the Bain Brand
Accelerator approach and leveraging our leading edge Bain Lighthouse℠ resource, which offers
in-depth insights into actual shopper behaviors
 Optimize the strategy and execution of pricing and trade terms to help companies reach full
potential
 Help turn supply chains into a competitive advantage with quick wins and bold strokes
 Become a true partner for retailers, adding value through sophisticated collaboration programs
built on shopper insights, integrated supply chains, systems and data sharing
 Align, measure and provide frontline incentives for perfect sales execution
 Build a culture of continuous cost improvement, ensuring the organization measures and tracks
true cost-to-serve in order to drive it down relentlessly over time
 Master mergers and acquisitions to gain a competitive advantage in target selection, valuation
and integration—building additional scale and the resulting economic efficiencies
 Simplify, speed up and slim down operating models to maximize the effectiveness and efficiency
of their organizations
 Create a talent pipeline to deliver growth expectations

Literature Review
I referred to Bain’s brand accelerator guide to understand underlying principle – Penetration is the king.
This guide book extensively discusses the current tests conducted and why.

As tableau is a very specific tool, I used tableau guide available at Bain’s disposal and referred to internet.
 Method
The general business problem provided by the client was to optimize product portfolio, which means
either venturing into new related categories, introducing or rolling back SKU’s or brands, in order to push
top line.

Current flow for the case and the tentative timeline is as follows:

Activities Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Week 6

Data Collection
Data cleaning
Data processing
Insights development
Presentation to the client

I. Data collection: Data involved in the case is of four type point of sale data, media data, panel
data and company’s financial data. Point of sale involves scanned data, and data collected by
primary research. Media data is data on how much capital was spend on various mediums of
advertisement over various years. Panel data is outcome data via survey of households regarding
their consumption in said category.

II. Data cleaning: It is an important process because of un-cleaned ends up giving dump value as
output. This process also looks at availability of the metrics which are required to carry out the
analysis. Required metric is either collected or calculated, in case both are not possible, suitable
proxy is used.

III. Data Processing: This stage involves using the data and carrying out the analysis. The analysis
was first done on excel, this helps in cross checking the results on later stages. It also helps in
getting first look on how the results of various tests will look like. Later on the data is processed
on tableau.

IV. Insight development: This part of process is jotting down the results of the tests and formulating
assumption of what can be the possible reasons of the result. We also look on various analyses
which can be conducted to validate the assumptions. The major insights involve performance of
the company in the category on brand and SKU level, target clusters of consumers on the basis of
their consumption pattern.

V. Presentation to the client: All the outputs from the tableau are presented to the client in a
PowerPoint format as per Bain standards. Tableau file with all the relevant dashboards and user
guide for each dashboard is shared with the client.

Every case has a new dynamics and hence requires a different kind of analysis, apart from regular
analysis. My project revolved around collating all the tests, making dashboard for all the tests in a single
tableau file, so that data can be fed directly. This exercise would reduce the effort of data processing
 Results
 Delivered a fully functional toolbox, which encompasses various tests, in order to provide insight
on brand performance. Toolbox has filter options so client can view performance across various
years, brands, regions, repertoires and channels.
 Compared company’s performance with the competition within the segment, region, and category
 Compared performance of various products within the company
 Provided suggestions to the client on the tests and insights

Reference
 Wikipedia
 https://www.tutorialspoint.com/tableau/