CONSULTING

Consumer behaviour is changing drastically with the booming millennial generation being much more demanding on the origin and healthiness of food and beverages as well as demanding companies to be totally transparent, socially and environmentally responsible.

At the same time, consumers are developing new and more frequent shopping habits, shifting from modern trade to directly to the consumer through e-commerce. Organisations are battling to keep up.

The digital age is drastically changing the world and way of doing business with people being constantly connected and demanding immediate responses to their many questions. This also completely redefines how we effectively connect with all stakeholders as consumers, shoppers, employees, local communities, etc. as well maintain the life span of the product cycle.

In this age of permanent change, it is difficult to keep up as a leader with all these micro changes that are resulting in a distinct macro change.

As a CEO and Board member of multiple FMCG companies, I have been exposed to most of these issues over the years. I strongly believe that the way forward is being shaped by things like "precision marketing" and relevant segmentation (need scope) and asking ourselves "how can we create a digitally fluent company?", revamp and accelerate innovation processes and time to market, effective multi-channel sales management, from in-house manufacturing to flexible and efficient co-manufacturing, licensing models, etc.

Additionally, I have led one of the biggest mergers in Danone when Unimilk was merged with Danone Russia creating one of the largest food companies in Russia and CIS. Aside from clearly being a huge business challenge, it was mainly a human and cultural challenge that was managed effectively, making it one of the most successful mergers the company has gone through to date.