How to execute effective change in Net Revenue Management

Foreword

NRM - also known as Revenue Growth Management (or versions of it) - has increasingly gained traction as a key strategy for successful CPG companies. Understanding where and how to invest and focus, and acting on meaningful insights, gives savvy organizations a key advantage. This is vital at a time when pressure on margins is growing due to fierce competition in an uncertain environment laden with choice.

A ‘single version of the truth’ when it comes to plans, insights, and performance is a prerequisite of enabling an organization to analyze and act quickly when it matters. Crucially, the technology that underpins this single truth principle provides a platform for businesses to improve their commercial operations.

More and more firms are turning to NRM to harmonize the way sales teams operate, record and enhance promotions, and manage commercial dealings and joint business plans with their customers. It removes the need for cumbersome, spreadsheet-based systems and provides clarity across a wide range of metrics, and it affords managers instant access to data to make decisions and engage in fact-based negotiation.

Implementation of NRM platforms should be thought of as a form of digital transformation in its own right rather than that term being reserved for technology implementations such as switching to Microsoft Teams or Slack.

Many businesses have already taken steps to improve their commercial acumen. Other organizations are just setting out on the journey. Still more are stuck with traditional ways of doing things, from scattered spreadsheets to data inputs that obscure the truth about performance.

Retail Insight has decades of experience helping major firms reshape their commercial structures, driving stickiness and adoption through cornerstone technology and insight implementations. In this report, we combine that insight and learnings with fascinating commentary from sales and IT leaders at blue-chip businesses.

It is vital to note that tech should not be viewed as the be-all and end-all of change. It is true to say the right tool can be a game-changer. But it must be accompanied by a clear vision and decisions on scope to determine which parts of NRM and the wider organization are included.

Equally important is which parts will be addressed at a future stage. Without this clarity from the outset, organizations diminish their chances of successful implementation.

Finally, having a watertight process and people aligned to the objectives on board is mission-critical, or user adoption will not happen and change will never stick.

This report sets out why an NRM strategy is key to bringing profitable change to your business, and why a domain expert technology partner is crucial on this journey. Firstly, we will consider why change is necessary and what successful NRM change could look like in an ideal world.

Next, we will examine some of the common issues faced by organizations when they set out on the road to change and seek to “win hearts and minds”, in the words of one commentator.

To conclude, we will share learnings from the experts about key components to successfully landing NRM strategies, including Retail Insights’s own approach to change when partnering businesses on the journey. We will focus on our market-leading tool NRMInsight and the results it produces for our clients.

We want to arm you with industry insights about problems you will recognize from your own experience, and instill you with confidence that the road to change is one worth taking.

Most of all, we hope you will learn how to handle the delicate balancing act of change for better NRM, and do the right things at the right time. As one expert told us: “Change too fast and you break people and the business. Change too slow and you miss the bus."

Benefits of change

There are myriad reasons why organizations require change.

Smart leaders are reshaping their entire operations around an updated business plan, driven by NRM best practice. Get to the insight of what works and what does not quickly, and act accordingly to drive growth or stem loss. The need to remain competitive and agile has been thrown into sharp relief by the COVID-19 crisis and the new ways it is affecting business at a local and global level. Now more than ever, organizations are required to adapt their plans in mid-flow to meet changing requirements on promo spend and consumer habits.

NRM can drive change and quantifiably relieve pressure on cost and margin. Departmental heads could press for the ability to more accurately measure and show off success. Or clamor for change might come from those at the sharp end, demanding the latest technology to do their jobs properly and work more closely with colleagues.

Drivers of change in NRM fall largely into the following categories:

• Overhauling outdated operations
• Harnessing multiple data sources
• Growing joint profitability from promotional plans
• Unifying metrics across markets
• Changing needs of the sales force

Let us take a closer look at some of these aspects using the insights of experts we spoke to.

The modern way

A surprising number of sales operations still work on spreadsheets. With the volumes and budgets involved this seems staggering particularly in an era when more of us will be working from home and data must be readily available to support business-critical tasks.

Traditional IT systems do not cut it anymore; the time has come for leaner organizations. Commercial practices can be underpinned by technology driving a unified, complete NRM operation, where interdependent teams strive for sales success.

We are rebuilding our processes to be more modern. We want a system that offers good solutions for retailers, but internal flexibility that reflects our current demand.

Tatyana Kalenova
Senior Trade Marketing Operations Manager, Ferrero

Driving data value 

From EPOS to internal data, multiple sources feed the sales machine. Yet they can also leave teams operating in a ‘messy kitchen’, unsure which information provides an accurate commercial picture. Often this can be a result of outdated systems, but technology exists that offers a productive stream of data for NRM, demand planning, supply chain management and more.

The more advanced an organization wants to be, moving towards an AI-driven future, the less it can afford to have disparate sales managers inputting data in many forms and formats hence the growing need for a single version of the truth.

We need one data source where we can operate all promotions figures, and company figures in general. A calculation, estimation and assimilation of different areas to solve our finance targets: growth margin, ROI, market contribution and so on.

Tatyana Kalenova
Senior Trade Marketing Operations Manager, Ferrero

Commercial gain 

Put bluntly, business needs growth. Overhauling NRM provides a platform for incremental revenue and profit. It vastly improves visibility on budget allocation and displays what is recouped. It can also be a driver of category growth, benefiting retailers as well as companies. The current crisis has thrown into sharp relief that although executing carefully built plans will set organizations off in the right direction, the ability to proactively respond to changes and influence retailer decision-making in real time is what drives real growth.

We removed the invisible money tree. The sales team would hit their revenue and volume numbers but we did not understand if they were doing it the right way, or levels of efficiency. We have delivered significant savings and measure cost and ROI ongoing. We will know if better returns would be available by doing something different.

Senior project source
Leading international drinks company

A new world view

Many blue-chip businesses enjoy market dominance around the globe. But with that mighty scale comes complexity: sales teams doing their own thing in different territories. To incrementally improve margins, a single version of the truth with common NRM capability, learning and reporting is essential, no matter where teams are driving volume.

If you do not have a solution that consistently reports on promotions in the same way everywhere, you will get to a tipping point where optimizing them becomes a lot harder.

Rachel Young
Group Revenue Director, Nomad Foods

NRM by the numbers

At all organizations we spoke to, the needs of the user community were an important facet in change programs. In essence, NRM teams need technology that helps them do their job better. Some firms are moving beyond the process efficiency of TPM (daily promotions management) to the prescription of TPO (maximize ROI). An important consideration, irrespective of how broad the NRM objectives are, is to ensure that the technology is a seamless enabler for the user to achieve the set objectives. As soon as users spend more time trying to make the tech work, they will inevitably revert to old, trusted ways.

One of the key things should be plug and play architecture where you put more control in the hands of the user; zero touch, where they can literally use the system like a mobile phone.

Anand Gonibeedu
India BU IBS Lead and AMEA Customer Experience Lead, Mondelēz

Takeaway

Although the concept of NRM has been around for decades, an increasingly competitive environment and the development of technology to harness the power of data has led many organizations to take a new, corporate-wide look at this space.

Some organizations have undoubtedly made significant progress in updating commercial processes. They are providing users with the right information at the right time. By and large, however, businesses are still heavily dependent on manual processes, relying on imperfect data from myriad sources.

With the current accelerated capability of technology and data, companies that continue to operate the status quo will soon find themselves at an irreversible disadvantage. The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown into even sharper relief the need for organizations to be ready, with clearly defined roles and dependencies, to act and intervene when it matters, internally as well as in their frequent interactions with their customers.

Combining an end-to-end, interdependent commercial organization with a smart combination of technology, data and user capability will drive results and category growth. As time spent on matching claims and sharing input templates is replaced by reviewing possible scenarios and recommendations across different functions, organizations will be able to find those profit pockets to drive, and loss-making activities to avoid.

In the next section, we will consider what is getting in the way of more businesses committing to change.

The whole point is the enablement of capability to give people the confidence to do more themselves. Let's harness the data rather than it being an Aladdin’s Cave, only ever seen by two or three people.

Kevin Nolan
Net Revenue Manager, Bayer

Challenges of change

Anyone who has been involved in a change program will know the best-laid plans do not always run smoothly.

There are multiple factors at play. Too many moving parts; too many cooks, without real leadership; nostalgia for the security of the ‘old ways how things have been done around here’. All these problems and more can be barriers to success.

Our experts told of NRM projects that were diverted or derailed. Reality shows that despite the desire and intention to upgrade some or all NRM processes and leverage emerging technology, a significant shift in standard practices has not materialized.

Although projects have achieved success in various forms, obstacles included:

• Falling back on a ‘tech-first’ approach
• Misunderstanding NRM’s purpose: too much change, too soon
• Protective user community resistant to change
• The risk of losing knowledge during the process
• Uncertainty over which data is valuable
• Implementing a newly centralized strategy

Next, we expand on these issues, using the benefit of our experts’ wisdom.

Keeping it real 

In bigger organizations, the term NRM may mean little outside the commercial department. Even commercially minded colleagues might not truly understand it.

The wider business may need to be educated about the discipline and its benefits before they can embrace a change program that touches many areas of an organization. This takes time, and trust.

Lots of companies say ‘we do promotional optimization’ but don’t know the true impact on their P&L. It is really promo management.

Rachel Young
Group Revenue Director, Nomad Foods

The NRM title does not mean much to people. It is still fairly new in many CPGs and takes time for the internal customer to think correctly about it. How will it drive value for them?

Vicente Garcia
IT Global Capability Lead Revenue Management and Trade Promotion, Kimberly-Clark

Shooting for the moon 

Firms embarking on change can be guilty of over-engineering the proposed solution. This is where change management, business or digital transformation need to be viewed through different lenses.

Too much change is never a good thing and new processes can “strangle” innovation, according to one expert. In terms of an NRM upgrade, what exactly is the objective and how does that inform the tools you need for the job?

Understand what the solution can and cannot do, and accept that. One of our mistakes was trying to make it do everything.

Senior project source
Leading international drinks company

Vested interests

Some of our contributors mused their organization had not always been successful at managing multiple points of view and personalities. Just as in day-to-day operations, different team leaders will have varying objectives and perhaps understandably want to defend their patch (in a recent BDO survey¹ 28% of businesses cited resistance to change as a reason for projects being shelved).

Managing expectations is the hardest thing. Everyone thinks change should touch neighboring departments, not theirs. No one wants to break their own traditions.

Tatyana Kalenova
Senior Trade Marketing Operations Manager, Ferrero

Transformation conjures ‘big bang’ programs; change management should be framed as user experience. Get under the skin of people and consider how these tools can make them more productive and do their job better.

Anand Gonibeedu
India BU IBS Lead and AMEA Customer Experience Lead, Mondelēz

You can have advocates but others who say it is an admin exercise. You carefully explain the benefits but they do not want the detail. Yet they are the first to shout if their guys say we are ‘spending too much time’ internally.

Senior project source
Leading international drinks company

Death by spreadsheet

Some promotional programs have thousands of users with the majority working from Excel (or Numbers). One commentator described their firm's approach as “a cottage industry of spreadsheets”. But one person’s accountancy arsenic is another’s numerical nirvana, and that means acceptance of change will be more gradual.

Another problem is loss of legacy intelligence. New processes can destroy existing knowledge from team members whose spreadsheets may actually be a commercial mother lode. Lesson: do not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Change the system but keep vital insight on the roadmap, often from local experts and make it easy for them to complement the program with their tools in the interim.

If you have 165 countries doing the same thing 165 different ways on 165,000 spreadsheets, it is chaos. You might as well have businesses run separately.

Andy Tosney
Former Vice President of Global Sales Strategy, Mondelēz

The data deluge

Perhaps the most prevalent issue is just what to do with all the existing data. Multiple data sources that are available can bring powerful insights, however these are often in various inaccessible places, non-compatible formats, duplicated or simply outdated and incomplete. Where organizations or individuals have managed to build some initial structure around data and knowledge, the sheer volume and complexity of it can blow people’s minds. Some may feel they have just got to grips with how to stay on top of the data and what it means, and will not want to change.

We need a more commercially savvy organization to cope with the data. That adds complexity and challenges current skill sets. Keeping pace is difficult but without doing so the problems will be exacerbated.

Kevin Nolan
Net Revenue Manager, Bayer

Go to any company now and ask people to show you the plan; they will come back with Excel, Powerpoint, different things. The opportunity is to forget about all of those and just have one thing.

Vicente Garcia
IT Global Capability Lead Revenue Management and Trade Promotion, Kimberly-Clark

Little local difficulties

Although many NRM change teams set out specifically to overhaul and improve the way different markets plan, run and report on commercial activities, local traditions remain a key stumbling block. That is not limited to cultural, work or language barriers; it is also vital to understand national regulation and capabilities, for example. A suddenly centralized approach can be a shock to the system for local teams and will need careful management to ensure they join the journey. Being able to separate the central data and knowledge management design from how users engage with a system to respond to local processes and challenges is imperative to a sustainable implementation. Staying on top of top-line spend may be a key objective for one market, whereas users in more advanced markets need insights to drive retail margin through adjusting depth and frequency for the remainder of the year. The underlying data is the same, but each market will assess success and whether their individual objective has been met.

Retailer funding works differently across markets so creating cross-market analysis can be tricky. We have NRM managers in most markets, with a central team that develops the strategy and partners with our markets to implement best-in-class ways of working.

Rachel Young
Group Revenue Director, Nomad Foods

Takeaway

Given the scale, complexity and number of stakeholders involved, the quest for making a change for the better is beset with difficulties if the right approaches are not taken. That means knowing how to deal with all stakeholders and practical aspects of the commercial operation, specifically addressing leadership, the organization’s people, and not picking technology ahead of purpose.

Technology will drive ever greater insights and decision making; however, we know that the people involved with the project are the key to successful implementation. Leadership from the outset must be clear and inclusive of the scope of the NRM project, aligning targets and objectives. Failing to determine which prize to go after and how, or picking shiny tools ahead of clear objectives, will doom change projects from the word go.

While upgraded processes, complemented by technology, will be the most visible change, people will remain the most important component of the organization that determines success. Without their input at all the right stages of the design and implementation process, success will quickly flounder.

There is no single most important part to involve users in, because people will respond differently to various aspects of change. We have seen people establish many barriers to change despite the fact a new approach would be of great benefit to them. Not being clear on purpose, anxiety about changing established and trusted ways, or fear that a personally built and developed model will be replaced by a complex, mammoth process or tool are just a few of those roadblocks, irrespective of the compelling use case.

Finally, ensure that the underpinning technology enables processes as well as enhancing the organization’s capability. No matter how advanced a new strategic direction, if the effort to operate and understand it outweighs its perceived benefit, the organization will quickly move back to old ways.

With these challenges in mind, the next section underscores ways to manage and implement lasting and successful change.

The way we operate is decentralized with independent regions running their own business. The challenge is getting them all to work more closely and follow one global capability.

Vicente Garcia
IT Global Capability Lead Revenue Management and Trade Promotion, Kimberly-Clark

Better change

In this section, we will explore what good change management looks like with perspectives from our experts who are experienced in NRM transitions.

Then we will examine the need for a clear roadmap to chart change, and the cutting-edge technology that exists to make sure the journey is as smooth and successful as possible. The tool must fit with the requirements of new processes.

Firstly, here are our contributors’ top tips for change management.

Framework for change 

Who an organization picks to steer the change project will greatly affect its chances of success. This is perhaps the area our experts disagree on the most. Some set up based on function of team members, others by who has the right personality to get the job done.

Change should be led by commercial. IT and finance support us in what we need to run the customer base for optimal growth and efficiency - if not, the tail wags the dog. NRM is a commercial tool to make better customer decisions and more money. But… you will need strong, collaborative and knowledgeable sales leaders to do it with cross-functional support.

Andy Tosney
Former Vice President of Global Sales Strategy, Mondelēz

Leadership from function A or B is the old paradigm. This ought to be seen now from an end-result perspective: who has the greatest influence in engaging people and changing things?

Anand Gonibeedu
India BU IBS Lead and AMEA Customer Experience Lead, Mondelēz

It is clear, though, that a narrow focus on sales will not work. Involve capable senior folk from NRM and sales (of course), finance, IT, demand planning and HR as a minimum.

As for ultimate leadership:

Let's work together

Updating the business is crucial, as a Microsoft survey² found 49% of employees are fearful of transformation; 61% of leaders recognize anxiety is an issue. Using communication as a way to solve uncertainty is critical to getting buy-in.

Our observers agreed that involving the user community in testing and improving the strategy as well as the software when appropriate. Working feedback into the process is an important way to seed change, building advocacy and enhanced capability. After each feedback loop, organizational capability should be enhanced; this is another key part of the roadmap.

Communication from the top has to be continual, engaging and consistent. If your employees buy into the benefits and change, it then lasts. If you simply and occasionally tell them what is going to happen, you will never get buy-in. Change can also feel personal to people - the visibility provided by NRM can be like opening a Pandora’s Box of bad business decisions made in the past that have cost the business. This seriously questions capabilities, and can feel personal and get political.

Andy Tosney
Former Vice President of Global Sales Strategy, Mondelēz

It is not about NRM and finance coming to make you do this report or that process. You can help them see they cannot do it on their own.

Vicente Garcia
IT Global Capability Lead – Revenue Management and Trade Promotion, Kimberly-Clark

One step at a time

It is natural to want to rush to the best solution. But our experts preach caution and the need to see change as a long game, with clear staging posts along the way.

It is vital to give eventual end users of the new NRM system some form of visual representation of what the day-to-day will look like for them, making it real rather than simply dropping it on them when it is ready. What one contributor termed “a Minimum Viable Product mindset” is required.

In other words, take a single step on the roadmap, clocking up early, achievable wins; share those across the organization; and repeat that process to reap further benefits in an iterative way. Change management requires ongoing capability growth, and a process and people that are fit for the long haul and build progressive, lasting adoption.

If someone tells you that you can do it in a year they are lying.

Vicente Garcia
IT Global Capability Lead – Revenue Management and Trade Promotion, Kimberly-Clark

All about the data

Earlier, we saw how best practice NRM relies on having one version of the truth in terms of data. But that only bears fruit if users understand and trust the information that is in front of them. That trust and dependency will only become greater as AI becomes an embedded reality in this process undoubtedly opening up huge opportunities.

You may use data from a source to create, calculate and enhance. But if a person is suspicious of the data and it does not match their intuitive sense of what it should be, they will not use it.

Anand Gonibeedu
India BU IBS Lead and AMEA Customer Experience Lead, Mondelēz

Seek external support

Vendors should be seen as an important partner in the change process, not just a technology provider. Change management support, an objective view, is critical.

External experts will act as a change partner. They will help define the roadmap before moving on to stress test proposed technology. The best vendors know what it is like on the client’s side of the table, offering experience and guidance about how to overcome obstacles with both personnel and the tech itself.

Consultants are a good way to start the transition. They can accomplish things faster because they are able to focus full-time on what you need.

Vicente Garcia
IT Global Capability Lead – Revenue Management and Trade Promotion, Kimberly-Clark

Takeaways

We know that despite the challenges and complexity that surround enterprise-wide NRM change programs, businesses do succeed in implementing their plans. It takes a skillful combination of scoping, technical expertise, patience and diplomacy.

Clear leadership across functions is critical to determine the exact scope, set expectations, and appoint an autonomous team to design and implement the roadmap. This is not a short journey. Both in terms of the scale of potential change and the number of people involved to maximize chances of success, initial objectives can take years to achieve.

The best change comes about when the strategy, process design and change management program are conducted in partnership with external support that combines NRM domain expertise with technical knowhow.

The focussed approach which results will ensure that processes are seamlessly underpinned with smart technology that is easily adopted by the organization, while maintaining a clear overall vision so that today’s choices do not hamper future steps that are yet to be defined.

A single version of the truth not only provides efficiencies for smarter sharing and more effective decision-making in the present. Today’s output becomes tomorrow’s input into new, advanced processes as the organization’s capability grows.

We needed a vendor for key areas of focus but also to help with change management.

Senior project source
Leading international drinks company

NRMInsight: One version of the truth

According to the BDO/Raconteur survey³, 58% of senior executives believe a formal change management strategy is key to successful change; 42% have already engaged external consultants to implement their plans to bridge vision and reality.

Retail Insight is perfectly placed to offer that support. We partner with businesses worldwide to implement NRMInsight to enable roadmaps for commercial change. We understand the end goals and where your company is on its capability journey. We are with you at every stage, from planning to post-delivery support.

Underpinning this strategy is our commercial business planning tool, NRMInsight. It offers a single version of the truth; unifying disparate markets and operations to provide a highly accessible view of your entire commercial function to understand your and your customer’s position in real time.

Main features include:

Visualization of all metrics in one place 

Immediate access to all metrics, KPIs and performance indicators in a modern and intuitive UX environment; allowing account managers to make wiser decisions and stay on the front foot by collaborating with business intelligence teams to optimize campaigns and negotiate with customers.

End-to-end approach

Through its modular approach, NRMInsight covers all facets of commercial planning and performance tracking, from building a strategic plan to trade spend management and claims handling, from trade promotion management and optimization to joint business plan tracking, offering real-time performance indicators and optimization tactics; shared across functions; all by region, country, channel and brand.

Corporate memory

When people leave an organization they often take crucial campaign knowledge with them; NRMInsight allows you to learn from your peers and their past experiences by offering easy access to find out what worked, what did not, and consider your best next steps, through the tool or by integrating with your data lake and other applications.

Fits your business

Importantly, we will not force a whole new approach on your operation; we fit in with your processes, unlocking only relevant modules in tune with your capability roadmap and integrate with existing systems such as SAP and retail data feeds, translating the tool into language and sectors that are standard for your organization.

Change management

NRMInsight offers a templated approach to NRM that helps users get the most from it; change becomes valuable and permanent.

Case study

Ready to improve

Our client, a leading global drinks manufacturer, was under threat of being delisted altogether from one of the UK’s top 3 retailers, as retailer profit margins fell significantly short of expectations.

In a category highly impacted by seasonality and led by events, the business only had ROI visibility at an aggregate activity level, and only after the events had taken place. Furthermore, with over 100 SKUs to manage across the full retail estate, limited understanding of true baseline performance and trends was apparent.

Reliable insight 

Working with our client, we applied our experience of joint business planning and performance tracking, agreeing an account manager capability roadmap. Through NRMInsight, account managers were able to immediately view ROI and retailer margin impact at the SKU and event level. This exposed the true impact of seasonality and retailer price changes on events, and allowed the account managers to identify instances where trade spend was invested on less effective promotional mechanisms.

Furthermore, we were able to identify hidden gaps in distribution and gain an understanding of the mix effect, all the while seeing the true impact on both the internal and the retailer’s P&L. This allowed our client to have a fact-based conversation outlining the drivers of underlying current performance.

Applying these learnings, NRMInsight enabled trained account managers to efficiently model and compare over 25 joint business plan scenarios, providing detailed insight into where and how to invest, and the expected impact on sales and profit down to SKU level from our client and the retailer’s perspective.

Rapid intervention

Enabling a fact-based discussion on the root cause of past performance, plus providing a transparent joint business plan scenario model where each component has an ROI value attached, rebuilt and strengthened the relationship with the retailer. After the intervention, a joint business plan was agreed that drove retailer margin by 52 basis points, whilst cutting Trade investment by £2.4m.

Besides the commercial result, a key metric for our customer was to ensure this intervention was sustainable, achieved through standard capability building underpinned by a standard way of operating through NRMInsight.

Over £2.4m of real trade spend savings achieved through investing smarter and better collaboration; driving joint profitability and margin.