Our cases

After becoming independent from Sanofi in 2025, Opella, now the #3 global player in the €190 billion OTC and VMS market, set out to redefine its commercial and customer strategy capabilities. The company aimed to accelerate eCommerce growth and ensure its plan to double online revenues by 2030 remained aligned with market trends and digital opportunities. To support this, Opella partnered with SparkOptimus to review and enhance its global eCommerce growth strategy and investment roadmap.

SHV Energy, a leading global distributor of off-grid energy, serves 26 million customers across 25+ countries with over 13,000 employees. To become future-proof – seizing long-term opportunities while optimizing current operations – SHV Energy launched a Digital &Transformation Academy for its ~150-person Extended Leadership Team. This academy empowers Business Units (BUs) with common methodologies, tools, and examples to drive local transformation. SHV Energy asked SparkOptimus to design the Digital & Transformation Academy and facilitate part of the program. This initiative aimed to equip all BUs with the knowledge and resources needed to implement effective changes. The ultimate goal was to better serve customers by fostering a culture of innovation, continuous improvement, and digital proficiency across the organization.

Greif set out to drive adoption of their new customer portal, Greif+, enabling customers with 24/7 self-service and order management. A key challenge was ensuring adoption not only by customers but also by local sales and service teams, turning them into Greif+ ambassadors. Beyond initial pilots, Greif aimed to scale the portal across business units and regions to create a unified digital experience.

Opella CHC, leader in the Consumer Healthcare market, offers a wide range of over-the-counter products and vitamin & mineral supplements. The consumer healthcare landscape is rapidly changing, with both established players and new brands constantly launching new products. To maintain and grow its strong market position, Opella needed to accelerate its product innovation process. To expand its mass retail presence and streamline innovation, Opella collaborated with SparkOptimus to enhance their product development capabilities and significantly reduce the time from idea to market launch.

A global leader in industrial packaging with annual sales exceeding $6 billion aimed to become the best-performing customer service company in the world. To enhance its customer experience and expand its digital service model, the company needed support in accelerating the roll-out of a pilot customer portal. This portal would empower customers to place and manage orders 24/7, allowing local teams to focus on higher-value tasks.

A market leader in high-quality ornaments was seeking to define its next chapter of commercial growth. Operating in a highly competitive market, the company recognized that refining its route-to-market (RtM) strategy would be critical to achieving its ambitious sales goals for 2028. To accelerate its growth, the firm aimed to strengthen its customer engagement, merge digital and business capabilities, and create a scalable foundation for the future.

Heineken Mexico, part of the world’s most international brewer with over 80,000 employees and more than 35 billion in global revenues, was looking to harness the potential of Generative AI (Gen AI) to drive efficiencies and improve customer satisfaction. They wanted to explore AI use cases across their operations and kickstart AI initiatives in key areas like sales and customer service.

A leading Belgian private equity firm approached SparkOptimus to conduct a technology due diligence on an AI-driven media company poised to disrupt its industry. As part of their investment evaluation, they needed a deep dive into the company's use of Generative AI (Gen AI) and the future impact of emerging technologies like OpenAI’s Sora. With this in mind, they sought our expertise to assess the company's technical and data landscape, ensuring they could make an informed investment decision.

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This leading chocolate manufacturer sought to accelerate their speed-to-market, enhance customer-centric innovation, and streamline their vast product portfolio. They recognized the potential of Generative AI to transform their sales processes and partnered with SparkOptimus to realize this vision.

VNAB is the trade association of the Dutch co-insurance market, which represents the interests of 96 insurers & brokers. They facilitate large commercial high-risk insurances in the Netherlands through different types of services: supply relevant IT technology products, guarantee knowledge transfer between members, and function as a physical meeting center. SparkOptimus & VNAB jointly defined a vision to work towards the optimal, predictable, and digitally enhanced co-insurance chain for an excellent customer experience. This vision was iterated with members in round table discussions, where they subscribed to the ambition, while expressing the need for a business case before committing to the joint effort.

Biocodex, a global family-owned pharmaceutical company, expanded into the consumer health sector by acquiring IPRAD, a large women's health business, in 2020. Recognizing the growing shift towards online shopping, Biocodex sought to strengthen its ecommerce capabilities. They initiated 3 major projects: e-retail, direct-to-consumer (D2C), marketplace selling, led by a global ecommerce & digital team. These early initiatives highlighted opportunities for further alignment among stakeholders regarding the urgency, current state, and future direction of Biocodex's ecommerce efforts.

In recent years, the energy sector has faced significant disruptions due to the energy crisis and the ongoing transition towards sustainability. Eneco, a leading producer and supplier of natural gas, electricity and heat in the Netherlands, recognized the need to not only adapt to these changing market dynamics but to take the initiative in fostering a shift towards more sustainable consumption behaviours. Their vision was not just to introduce a new product but to catalyze a profound behaviour change that benefits both consumers' wallets and the environment. Driven by a vision to empower consumers with greener, more cost-effective energy choices through dynamic pricing and a broad range of services and products, Eneco partnered with SparkOptimus to kickstart the transformation, set-up and delivery of these innovations.

Budget Thuis is a leading energy and telecom services provider in the Netherlands, committed to providing reliable services at affordable prices. Serving more than a million customers, Budget Thuis holds a prominent position in the industry. Recognizing the substantial potential of Generative AI to enhance internal processes and the customer experience, Budget Thuis faced challenges in realizing its value independently. Therefore, they asked SparkOptimus’ support in identifying and prioritizing company-specific use cases, rapidly testing and proving the value by collaboratively building, testing, and improving MVPs, and designing an organizational setup for long-term, sustainable (Gen) AI innovation.

Heras, a leading supplier of perimeter protection solutions active in over 24 countries with more than 1,100 employees, faced challenges with a complex IT landscape and limited system integrations. This led to significant manual work and hindered data-driven decision making. To support their business growth and strategic objectives, Heras wanted to:

• Establish a value-driven IT strategy that directly contributed to their strategic business goals.
• Identify fit-for-purpose solutions, with clear visibility of costs and benefits over a five-year horizon.
• Define the processes, roles, and organizational changes required for effective change management and a sustainable end-state IT setup.

De Energiebespaarders embarked on the next phase of growth to realize its ambition of becoming the leading digital contractor for making existing houses more sustainable.

They enlisted our support to co-shape a strategic growth plan, identifying and prioritizing future growth initiatives while determining the organizational, technical, and financial implications of each, providing crucial input for the next funding round.

Shell sought a comprehensive assessment of its Lubricants Marine business and the AccuPort venture.

We established the current baseline, refined and iterated both short-term (MVP) and long-term (vision) propositions and business models, and developed organizational and technological blueprints. We also crafted a rollout strategy and plan, including financials and buy/build decisions, ultimately identifying 8 key initiatives to enhance Shell’s Lubricant Marine business.

As part of its 2035 vision, Shell Mobility BeNeFrux aims to ‘make green and enjoyable mobility seamless for everyone’, supporting the global net-zero emissions ambition. To turn this vision into reality, we developed a  concrete and actionable plan and began testing key hypotheses central to its 2035 strategy.

This involved conducting a series of tests and proof-of-concept projects within a controlled environment. Some tests yielded successful results, which were then scaled within the existing Shell organization. Other tests disproved hypotheses, thus preventing unnecessary resource expenditure and providing valuable insights.

Eneco faced stiff competition in the energy sector from emerging digital players offering superior digital value propositions. To counter this effectively, they had to transition to a digital-first model to quickly ideate and launch new products.

We facilitated this transformation by establishing an end-to-end, cross-functional organization centered on digital products, fostering a fast-learning way of working through SAFe agile. Concurrently, we validated this model by swiftly launching a dynamic pricing product. This initiative was successful, enabling Eneco to bring the product to market within months.

Enstall, a global leader in solar mounting systems, is navigating a rapidly evolving market where competitors are increasingly investing in digital functionalities and services. To stay ahead and avoid commoditization, Enstall sought to understand how digital solutions could add value for its customers across various go-to-market models.

We shaped Enstall’s digital proposition by designing the installer journey to enhance efficiency and foster loyalty, improving account and distributor management to better serve installers, and formulating strategic partnerships with other value chain players to jointly grow the solar market. This comprehensive digital transformation enables Enstall to maintain its competitive edge and continuously drive market growth.

Plastics waste is a complex challenge that requires collaboration amongst all players within the value chain. To address these challenges, Shell aimed to lead the plastics ecosystem by developing innovative 'win-win' solutions.

To kickstart this ambition, we assessed the ecosystem, identified opportunities, ideated solutions, and shaped two end-to-end proof of concepts.

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