ABOUT
Arla Foods, based in Denmark, is the fourth largest dairy company in the World owning some of the Worlds leading dairy based food brands, including Lurpak, Skyr, Yeo Valley – and many, many more.
A Division of Arla, Arla Pro is the dairy partner to chefs and foodservices businesses Globally – working closely in Partnership with professional kitchens to grow and transform their businesses.
In 2021 The Capability Bridge (TCB) was engaged by Arla Pro in Denmark to support the development of a 5 year, integrated strategy, a complex requirement that must, above all, be fully actionable
TCB was Arla’s choice as TCB’s consultants have a proven track record of developing practical and winning strategies, working with Teams in a participative manner, applying a repeatable process that provides detail, insight and clarity, and aligns all resources to ensure ultimate success.
THE PROCESS
TCB’s 3 stage “Zero Based Strategy” (ZBS) approach provides a practical and participative methodology, that integrates input from all the Teams and functions involved in planning & implementation.
The basis for TCB’s approach is that the strategy must be developed from the ground up, and that to ensure success at execution, Arla must draw on the skills and knowledge of the Teams involved.
ZBS drives and directs disciplined analysis and planning, ensuring the development of properly joined up, five year strategic growth plans – ultimately making sure that the overall strategy is fully actionable with specific tasks at a detailed, individual product level with resources fully aligned.
TCB’s role is facilitate and support the process by providing the process, tools and live action workshops, while Arla FS’ Leadership provides expertise, insights & input into the planning and production of the outputs. Arla FS’ integrated teams test and implement the process, the tools & formats as well as produce the outputs
The process started with a detailed analysis and assessment of the landscape in order to gain full clarity of the market drivers and trends – and thus the opportunities and threats. The outputs from this stage were applied at a granular level to understand the implications at the category, channel, and at the customer level.
Stage two used these insights to scope and size specific opportunities then applied a scoring methodology to prioritise each one.
Stage three detailed exactly how to win for each – considering the implications of internal resource and skills alignment, routes to market and sales & service.
A 5 years commercial plan was developed that included specific plans for 12 months’ initiatives to deliver the prioritised opportunities.
THE RESULT
Having delivered a highly detailed and actionable blueprint to deliver the strategy, and with disparate resources fully aligned for Denmark, the process, tools and templates can be rolled out to other Arla businesses – refined according to their size capabilities and resources.
Working with TCB provided Arla Pro with a proven, scalable pathway to the development of strategy, a prioritised order of opportunity, detailed plans to execute and full alignment of resources to ensure success.