Digital transformation: strategy and implementation

Digital transformation: strategy and implementation
What they wanted

Colgate-Palmolive Europe (CP EU) is a leading oral, personal, and household care producer with sales in Europe of over $2.4Bn. In recent years, sales of CP products have started to transition towards online through ‘clicks & bricks’, online drugstores, and online marketplaces. Recognizing the potential for online sales to grow further and being aware of the potential for improvement in digital and & e-commerce, CP EU has asked SparkOptimus to refine its digital & e-commerce strategy, including implications for the operating model, develop the resulting roadmap, and support implementation of the strategy.

What they said

SparkOptimus has been a true partner and an integral part of our digital transformation journey over the past year, from detailing the strategy to actually doing the implementation work side-by-side with our ecommerce & digital teams. SparkOptimus helped challenge our thinking about digital, and then worked with us to set up the right team to lead the transformation. Now we have a fully-fledged central digital team that can drive our digital strategy together with our country teams across Europe.

Prabha Parameswaran
Europe Division President at Colgate-Palmolive
What we did

SparkOptimus accompanied CP EU in a 3-phase journey, during which we worked side by side with all layers of the organization, building capabilities and fostering their ownership and leadership in strategy development and implementation as quickly as possible.

First, SparkOptimus refined CP EU’s digital & e-commerce strategy by assessing the status quo & opportunities, refining the strategy & operating model, and defining priority workstreams and detailed activities for roll-out of the digital opportunities, including the financial impact based on a three-year roadmap. In the next phase, we engaged with the wider leadership to develop the workstream ‘blueprints’ and drove the implementation work, actively engaging with workstream leads to design and set-up the Online Acceleration Center, their center of excellence for ecommerce & digital, launch pilot initiatives to develop CP EU online business with 2 retailers, and to define and launch experiments to develop ‘online-first/-only’ product lines. Next, we kick-started implementation and structured all new digital processes for the new Online Acceleration Center, and shoulder-to-shoulder with the OAC team initiated the Europe scale-up of commercial initiatives through active onboarding, training and in the development of practical value creation plans with partner retailers and pure players.

Digital transformation: strategy and implementation

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What we achieved

Through the joint strategic review, and now during implementation, CP EU’s leadership and the OAC have been able to claim a pathfinding role for the wider CP business with respect to how digital and ecommerce are delivered and scaled. This is driving the digital and eCommerce transformation throughout Europe, enabling new data insights on ecommerce performance, stepping up digital marketing efforts through in-sourced content creation and (social) media initiatives and scaling a pragmatic test-and-learn approach with regards to digital & ecommerce innovation activities. In addition, the OAC’s eCommerce team successfully engaged and trained 10 local country teams and supported them in planning engagements with 30+ partner retailers and pure players.

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