Case Study: A CPG's Small Business Enablement Journey
Bridging Complexity & Risk to a Successfully Deployed Strategic Business Solution
Introduction
It is all too common to see a client struggle to execute on a technology project in support of a strategic need, fearing the unknowns of project costs, timing, and successful delivery. These fears often contrast to an external service provider’s (ESP) desire to sell a deal for a technology and/or a team of resources for a period of time.
Addressing strategic or critical technology needs always has an element of risk for decision-makers and budget owners, who will each incur the consequences of project success or failure. Technology providers, on the other hand, have a point of view that their products and services will most certainly address a customer’s needs. Bridging the gap between the two parties is the job of a seasoned business development and consulting leader.
This case study highlights my work in bridging such a gap by leveraging my business development, consulting, and project leadership experience and expertise. I helped the client shape a vision for a solution, sold them a project concept & a globally-located technical resource team to get it done, and oversaw the project that delivered a complex technical solution that would address their strategic business need. Throughout, I worked with both the client and an ESP to plan & execute the project in a way that reduced business risk while ensuring project success.
Situation
A leading CPG beverage company wanted to increase its direct sales into the small store market to boost revenue and profit. This market represented a $1B+ potential in the form of thousands of small stores; think of the corner store near you where the owner or manager is behind the counter.
The CPG was constrained, however, by its current engagement process used for the mid-size market, relying on its Account Managers (AMs) to visit each store and sell, place, manage, etc. orders on a home-grown, tablet-based application to do so. But having AMs visit each store was not a scalable or logistically feasible solution for the small store market. To address the small store market, the company needed its application to enable small store owners or its employees to manage orders and deliveries without direct involvement of the beverage company’s AMs.
An internal services team within the CPG developed the existing application over multiple years and iterations to address the beverage company's complex product and distribution requirements across different geographic regions. The beverage product portfolio consisted of hundreds of nationally available products in a variety of packaging (single serve, 6-packs, variety packs, cases, etc.) along with regional items, new beverages being market-tested, and special offers (BOGOs, combos, etc.). The combinations of available items and packaging were significant but also specific to the geographic markets and the distribution center supply serving them. And the product & packaging mix changed frequently with seasonal offerings, marketing campaigns, and supply availability. Obtaining this information on a daily basis was critical for AMs in order to generate new orders with an accurate data set of items and their respective availability, options, and pricing.
But the existing order and delivery management application presented the beverage company with a handful of significant challenges:
While it eventually covered a wide range of functionality, the application was intended for trained AMs. Simplicity and alignment with familiar online ordering user interactions were not a driving factor in its development. It would be difficult if not impossible to train small store owners whose technology experience was more closely aligned with shopping apps on their mobile devices.
The application was ‘fat’; a standalone piece of software installed on a tablet device. AMs had to connect through the internet to central business applications once or twice a day (or more) to download order, delivery, pricing, etc. information and to upload new orders. The amount of information to download was significant and not efficiently organized, often taking an AM as much as an hour in the morning to download updated order & delivery status and sales item information.
The fat application did not provide a persistent shopping cart that a user typically sees in a modern e-commerce application. If the application was exited, any incomplete orders were lost. Additionally, without a way to centrally manage a shopping cart, there was no ability to ‘team sell’ from the CPG’s sales service center or deliver automated reminders to the small store owner about incomplete orders.
The application logic to identify available products, offers, delivery schedules, etc. to the unique region and territory of a given account manager’s responsibility was complex, requiring a deep understanding of the structure of the product, order, and delivery information across multiple business systems the beverage company used. The internal IT services team had developed such competence over years of experience.
To meet its small store market objective, the beverage company realized it needed a ‘self-service’ application for small store personnel on a mobile device that was easy to use on the small screen size of a modern mobile phone. Ideally it would enable AMs and sales service center to effectively team-sell and cross-sell as well to the small stores using the office computers or personal mobile devices.
The objective was well-defined, and both the IT services team leader and project sponsor recognized the need for an ESP team with expertise in UX, cloud technologies, and modern architecture & development, and CPG & Retail experience. However, they expressed concerns regarding the ability of external resources to grasp the complexity of the data and deliver a solution within a reasonable time and budget.
Task
Engaging the project sponsor to shape, sell, and oversee a project to address the challenges, I put together a plan and assembled a technical team to assess application infrastructure technology and e-commerce options to address the needs for a self-service, modern, and scalable application – and then implement and deploy the solution. The plan needed to address:
Usability by the target audience; that is, the managers at small stores and the beverage company’s AMs & sales service team,
Supportability by the beverage company’s internal IT services team, who would take ownership and long-term development responsibilities; and foremost
Developing confidence of the business leadership and project sponsor with risk-based approach to execution and financial management.
My role in this opportunity with the beverage company would span from solution shaping through to closing the deal (in this case, ‘deals’… read on) and overseeing successful delivery.
Activities / Solution
I collaborated with the project sponsor and IT service leader along with representatives from an ESP’s e-commerce & delivery teams to construct a 3-phase program of individually contracted sequential projects. Each project phase would allow the sponsor to evaluate overall progress and risk while allowing the IT services leader to assess confidence in the ESP’s globally located team's ability to deliver on the complexities of this project.
Phase 1: Assessment – Select software and cloud technologies and build PoCs & artifacts to demonstrate capabilities
Context - demonstrate external team’s ability to access and use the business systems’ complex data and transactions using the systems’ APIs in command line scripts and identifying their use on the apps key UIs.
Concept – work with owners of the existing application and beverage company’s domain experts to develop preliminary UI mock-ups for key user interactions, including the display of products and their respective images.
Technology – provide review and demonstrations of several different e-commerce application options, software frameworks, and application architectures on two different cloud service platforms, including the demonstration of DevSecOps and CI/CD pipelines on each platform for a simple ‘Hello World’ application with a mock-up transaction (a ‘Goodbye World’ button pushing an entry through a mock-up API into a database).
Functionality – Identify key UI screens, functional, and non-functional requirements. Identify a draft list of Agile Chapters, Capabilities, Epics, Features, and several representative story draft to illustrate Definition of Ready (DoR).
Execution – Document and agree to the Epic, Features, and Story backlog grooming & estimation processes (including Definition of Done, ‘DoD’). Document and agree to the roles & responsibilities of the beverage company’s IT services team and domain experts.
Propose – Collaborate with sponsor and IT services lead on Phase 2 proposal scope, including assumptions & risks
Phase 2: Design – In-depth elaboration of functionality and configuration of infrastructure & tooling.
Configure – Put in place cloud environments, security infrastructure & tools, DevSecOps, CI/CD pipeline, Agile project tools, etc. Test and verify end-to-end scaled Agile operations; provide initial training beverage company’s IT services team on operations.
Discover – Work with the beverage company’s domain experts and IT services team to identify all end-user workflows and UIs.
Define – Complete populating Agile backlog with Epics, Features, and Stories to meet workflows and UX/UI needs, with Stories defined at a preliminary state (not elaborated to DoR state).
Prepare – Prioritize and elaborate Stories for initial Sprints in the next phase of the program.
Propose – Collaborate with sponsor and IT services lead on Phase 3 proposal scope, including assumptions & risks. Estimate and plan for an appropriate number of sprints to complete MVP and MVP+ targets (sales service center, select AMs, and limited small store audience), followed by a V1 general availability release. Define a Three-track Agile Flow process for the third phase of the program:
Discovery - Backlog refinement, DoR story prep
Delivery - Sprint execution (dev, unit test)
Integration & Validation - CI/CD build, E2E test, system integration & test
Phase 3: Build & Deliver – Organize the software development into a series of sprints in a Three-track Agile Flow process
Initiate – onboard two feature development teams and a QA/test team; execute a test sprint to verify team readiness
Execute – Run the two-week sprints for the three-track Agile Flow process to deliver MVP & MVP+ releases. update backlog to address refinement needs,
Verify – Have sales service center, select AMs, and limited small store audience use the application in a controlled manner. Work with the beverage company’s IT service group to update backlog to address bugs and feature adjustment needs.
Complete – Execute final set of sprints to meet V1 general release needs and bug fixes, with the beverage company’s IT service group participating & shadowing the Agile Flow development process.
Handover – Review all application infrastructural, DevSecOps, CI/CD build, and Agile process management systems with beverage company’s IT service group. The service group accepts the Application and project as completed.
Support – Provide guidance and support to the beverage company’s IT service group for a several weeks to help resolve incidents that occur.
I coordinated with the sponsor, IT services leader, stakeholders, and ESP’s consulting & development teams to set clear project initiation and preparation steps for each phase, ensuring successful launch and clearly understood milestones, meetings, ceremonies, outputs, and metrics.
A pivotal element of the phased project approach I proposed was allowing the beverage company to select another external team after each of the initial two stages, should they deem it necessary. The relationships I developed with the project sponsor and IT services leader along with projects’ successes were extremely advantageous, ensuring the continuity of myself and the ESP throughout all three phases of the project.
Results
The project successfully opened the beverage company’s products to the $1B+ small store market.
The engagement approach allowed the beverage company to make stepwise investments over the three project phases to reduce financial risk, enable their IT services team to gain confidence in the solution & technologies, and enlist appropriate participation of constituents throughout the phases of the engagement.
The application successfully met the functional and UX needs of small stores, allowing their users to leverage personal mobile devices to manage orders and deliveries. Store employees were able to quickly and intuitively use the application after brief training. Initial results showed an increase in per-store order size and order frequency.
The persistent shopping cart also enabled the beverage company’s sales service group to team-sell and cross-sell to small stores, helping them close unfinished carts while cross-selling additional items and positively impacting Trade Promotion ROI, Sales & Promo Uplift, etc.
The technology stack – the e-commerce approach, the industry standard software platforms used, the Agile DevSecOps & release processes, etc. - was successfully transferred to the company’s IT services team after the post-MVP+ and V1 releases.
This engagement demonstrated by ability to both sell a strategic engagement and oversee the delivery efforts to assure customer success and satisfaction.
Take-aways
Clients aim to meet strategic business needs with technology projects that confidently achieve objectives and minimize risk. Projects should be shaped and phased to accomplish those objectives and bridge gaps in knowledge and technical feasibility.
The effort up front by a knowledgeable and experienced business development and consulting leader to shape, sell, and deliver projects to accomplish the above can accelerate a client’s success — strengthening the relationship and creating future opportunities.
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