Case Studies

Selection of previous projects and assignments. Get in Touch if you would like a deep dive into these projects and explore how we can help your organisation to grow.

  • Project Type: Customer & Growth Strategy | Brand Strategy | Sector: Retail > Sports & Life Style Apparel | Business Unit: Consulting & Advisory | Location: Herzogenaurach, Germany

  • The clients lost its #2 market position globally to revival Under-Armour, furthermore in mid America (outside of large cities), the brand is perceived as a life-style brand, consumers did not recognise it for its performance sports heritage. Revenue declined specifically from its performance category, this had a negative effect on brand PR - “brand Identity in crisis”, brand indifference, market capitalisation and shareholder value.

    The team was tasked with developing a long-term strategy that would enable the brand to take back its #2 position, reinforce its performance sports heritage, grow long term revenue and re-establish its brand position. This was a high-profile initiative within the organisation with board level sponsorship and oversight.

  • Developed a proprietary brand loyalty program. To establish brand affinity with consumers, reward them for their engagement; drive long term product sales – increase Av annual purchase from 1.4 Av to >=2 per year. Co-designed the program, defined mechanics, rules, levels, rewards, merchandising, logistics. Worked with Wunderman (strategy, data & creative agency) to develop program identity and collateral. Developed the revenue model and ROI potential. Developed new channels (apps & sites) and managed integration into enterprise infrastructure, e.g., eCommerce site, health & wellbeing apps, ePOS inside retail stores.

  • The program was successfully piloted in France, Germany, Singapore and Japan before larger markets launch such as US. Created program toolkit for global markets to adopt and launch at pace. The brand regained its #2 spot a couple years later in the US and globally.

  • Loyalty Program Design | Brand Strategy & Digital Marketing | Branding & Collateral Creation | Digital Apps Development | Programme Management | GTM Strategy | Business Case Development | Financial Modelling | Ext Partnership Management

  • Project Type: eCommerce | Sector: Insurance > eCommerce & Data Capture | Business Unit: Consulting & Advisory | Location: Zurich

  • The client presented an academic paper on customer behaviour within the insurance industry in Switzerland by Stefan Mau et al from ETH Zurich; – paper titled: “Understanding the Differences in Customer Portfolio Characteristics and Insurance Consumption across Distributed Channels”. The study highlighted a strong correlation in customers researching insurance products online and then purchasing in-store. The business has invested significantly on their digital infrastructure and capabilities, but has problems tracking prospective customers across different devises. With better digital journey tracking, product sales can be attribute accordingly to source and final sale channel. This is important for digital; for example, PPC traffic can cost between $10-$60 per click, subject to key words, demand, and time of bidding. Therefore, it is of paramount importance to put in place all the mechanism for better conversion, and at a minimum; capturing customer data for further communication and tracking into bricks & mortar stores if appropriate. 

  • Evaluated clients existing IT/digital infrastructure. Through a series of workshop, developed a solution and presented a logical architecture. Solution addressed data capture points, tracking all types of traffic (PESO Mix). Revised BPM, data flows, omni-channel tracking and related mechanisms. Recommended additional martech platforms for procurement and to integrate into existing infrastructure to create the proposed solution. Developed business case and ROI model to support capex investment. Solution Recommendations: 1. New Data Management Platform (DMP) -Kruk, BlueKai, Adobe Audience Manager. 2. Tag Management Platform – Tealium, 3. Digital Coupons Platform 4. Targeting Engine. Plan to incentivise prospective customers to share PII data, so this could be accessed instore where products are purchased.

  • The new solution architecture enabled the client to track visitors/customers across different channels.  Solution was could be replicated in markets outside of Switzerland, as the tracking capabilities was powerful.  The new solution architecture (through RESTful API/web services) enabled external partners to integrate easier, opening up opportunities for greater level of collaboration.

  • Digital Strategy | Strategic Transformation | Digital Solution Architecture| BPM Design | eCommerce | UX Journey Mapping | Project Management | PESO Analysis | Data Strategy

  • Project Type: eCommerce | Sector: Retail > eCommerce | Business Unit: Consulting & Advisory | Location: UK |

  • An award-winning baby product brand chose to revise its business model by consolidating all sales channels, promotions and distribution inhouse (shifting away from warehouse to D2C model). A strategic pivot away from its current model – selling predominantly through authorised 3rd party and external sales channels. The client desired greater control over pricing, messaging, promotion by selling directly to its customers, and wanting to carve out a greater own market share and profit.

  • Developed new business model & architecture to transition brand from current into the future business state. Developed new D2C eCommerce web & mobile channels. Created branded store on Amazon, mirroring 3rd party sellers. Designed their customer database, capturing “owned” channel customer data. Used new data framework to design a CLM structured CRM program. A very challenging and interesting category, where the customer is the adult and the consumer is the child, and customer lifetime is 11-12 yrs only. Designed and executed their PESO marketing mix framework.

  • It took 6-12 months for the client to consolidate their sales channels and remove all 3rd party sellers from their ecosystem. The retention program took over 6-12 months to gain traction (time taken for capture meaningful data for harvesting). The program yielded 11% extra revenue from repeat purchase. This figure will increase over time as the program matures. eCommerce trading, achieved a CRO 2.8% - 3.5% from owned channels and ROAS greater than 5:1, spiking to over 10:1 for high value travel systems on Amazon market place.

  • Digital Business Model | Business Architecture | BPM Design | eCommerce | Channel Development | Customer Data Strategy | CLM Structured CRM | Program Management | PESO & Trading

  • Project Type: Loyalty Management| Sector: Retail > Marketing > Loyalty | Business Unit: Consulting & Advisory | Location: UK

  • The client owns and manages the largest coalition loyalty program in the UK. Its largest partner in the coalition, decided to reduce its points to spend allocation from 2:1 → 1:1 ratio. This triggered a strategic business change initiative; the client faced a catalogue of challenges; for this case study only two are highlighted: 1. How to mitigate against future revenue loss approximately 40-50% in 12-18 months’ time. 2. Reduce customer churn & abandonment: The program may be perceived as less rewarding.

  • Tasked with co-developing a strategic plan to mitigate against revenue loss and customer churn. Cost saving was an obvious route; so, conducted a comprehensive business and process review; identified areas to reduce operating costs and improve efficiency. The following recommends were made: 1. Greater levels of marketing automation to drive efficiencies. 2. Invest in martech tools to fill the gap. 3. Redevelop all digital channels with personalisation front and centre, this was a clear shift away from mass promotions methods. 4. Shift program members away from print media to digital only communication. I managed a competitive procurement process to purchase the appropriate platforms and partnership.

  • Offer creation and management process netted 15-20% efficiency gains in the first 12 months, with an estimated 5-10% in subsequent years due to continuous process improvement, introducing more capabilities and harmonising the methods. Made significant cost saving through capitalisation, enabling capex investment; implemented a big data framework, allowing the client to deliver real-time machine learning personalisation. The analytics capabilities progressed from descriptive to more predictive and prescriptive math models, this is the gold standard for machine learning personalisation. The program was purchased by the partner that triggered this business change a few years later for approx. £60m. The sale of this program is public information.

  • Business Architecture | BPM | Business Analysis | Gap Analysis | Digital Platform Architecture Design (Martech) | Business Case Development & ROI Modelling | Machine Learning Personalisation | Procurement Management | Digital Channel Development

     

     

  • Project Type: Product Management| Sector: Retail > Marketing > Promotion | Business Unit: Interim Management | Location: Munich, Germany

  • The client is a similar business to I2C (AIMIA & Sainsburys Data Analytics and Insights Business) and Dunnhumby in the UK. It’s a market leader, offering category management, pricing strategy, loyalty management, brand and product promotions and retail consultancy to supermarkets and FMCG’s across Europe with a very large market share. 

    As part of their natural growth, to remain competitive, expand their value proposition; they wanted to develop an AI powered retail offer management platform that transforms shopper, loyalty card data with category & trade management data into personalised product and brand promotions for supermarket customers. Recruited from the UK with weekly commute to accelerate the development of this platform and provide expert knowledge in Retail Offer Management Process and Machine Learning Personalisation.

  • Created the product specification and roadmap, defined use-cases and outline user stories.  Developed wireframing and rapid prototyping best practice to validate features & functionality quickly. Future-proofed solution to include machine learning personalisation, predictive and prescriptive data analytics. Outlined the logical and web services architecture, designed for ease of integration with different supermarket’s and FMCG companies in a safe and secure production environment. Created end user testing and feedback loop throughout development cycles.  

  • Helped client to establish new revenue streams and expand their current value proposition into including personalisation. Played a pivotal part helping client to evolve from a consulting & data service business to incorporating products and platforms through SaaS business models. This product has now evolved into two separate offerings – emnosFood & emnosSPORT.

  • Digital Product Management | IP Generation | Application Development | Rapid Prototyping | Wireframing & UX | BPM & Design | Digital Business Model | Writing User Guides & SLA Definition | Continuous Integration | Agile Scrum Based Sprint | UAT & Automated Test Scripts

  • Project Type: eCommerce & CRM | Sector: Retail | Business Unit: Consulting & Advisory | Location: Istanbul, Turkey

  • The client set themselves an ambitious 4x growth target to be achieved in a 3–4year timeframe. This triggered a change programme, with multiple partners working together to deliver the overall transformation. The client is the market leader in eCommerce (size & revenue). The quickest route to achieving a 4x growth was by developing an Amazon style “Market Place” offering 3rd party sellers to trade on the platform. This is also the easiest and most cost-effective solution to increasing its product catalogue and offer greater selection of products to customer.  

  • Developed the business architecture and gap analysis to quantify effort, funds and resource required to transition into an environment that will deliver 4x growth. Developed data strategy to achieve single customer view (customer 360) to provide omni-channel personalisation. Created business case and ROI models. Manged a competitive procurement process, negotiated commercials and onboarding RichRelevance for Personalisation, Salesforce Marketing Cloud for orchestrating CRM comms and Twiggle for personalised & semantic search. Revised & refined the UX to improve conversion rate and redesigned the CLM/CLTV structured CRM program. Programme managed the implementation phase.

  • Redesigned & Optimised CX & UX to deliver 1.5%+ conversion rate (CRO) over baseline and to keep a 70% active customer base (Active defined as >=1 purchase in the last 3 months). The client listed on the Nasdaq in 2021 with a market cap of $3.9B. 

  • Business Architecture | GAP Analysis | BPM Design | eCommerce | Channel Development | Customer Data Strategy | CLM Structured CRM | Program Management | PESO Analysis | ML Personalisation | CLM/CLTV Structured CRM Program | UX & CX redesign | Procurement Management | Platform Integration

     

  • Project Type: Product Management| Sector: Leisure & Ent > eGambling | Business Unit: Industry | Location: UK

  • The business is the world largest online gaming/poker company (revenue & player volume) lost approximately ~70% revenue over night due to exiting the US market because of UIGEA. Tasked with restructuring (workforce reduction) the business, reducing costs and improve efficiency, also instructed to deliver more and at pace with less resources. Asked by the board to set up a new business unit “The Incubator” to identify new revenue streams from existing assets. Each initiative was presented to the board with a full business case, ROI modelling for funding and green lighting.

  • 1. Restructured my department by 40%. The business set aggressive strategy to launch products in 18 markets offering multilingual and multicurrency. All products and platforms were retro-engineered for internationalisation, allowing localised language packs to work without breaking the platforms and applications. Each language pack contained over 1million words (18 x 1m words). Outsourced bulk of translation to Lionbridge, and developed CAT tools internally and a team of 18 linguist, to reduce ongoing operational costs and reduce development and time to market.

    2. The Incubator developed a poker training academy offering personalised training to novice players. Aimed to reduce player churn and increase longevity and lifetime value. This wasn’t a problem when the business was operating in the US market, due to high volume of players, however post UIGEA when player numbers reduced, longevity was critical.

    Developed “Smart Bot Algorithms” – precursor to modern AI / Machine Learning Algorithms to identify novice players losing money too quickly in live games. Developed a real-time messaging application that automatically communicate to these novice players instructing them to abandon the game. These players were rewarded with bonus’s if they joined the academy and completed a set # of structured tutorials. In essence the academy is an eLearning application built on a tiered loyalty program with levels and monetary rewards. The hypothesis is better players will enjoy playing, will play longer and win more, because the house takes a % of the rake.

  • 1. Reduced department workforce 40%, launched products and services in 18 global markets over a 12–18-month period. Put in place infrastructure, new processes, automation that increased efficiency and time to market. Created a high-performing lean department. Poker revenue stabilised but did not lose market share to competitors.

    2. The poker academy yielded $5m in the first year of operations. Academy players were tracked through the platform and all revenue generated (direct & indirect) was attributed to the academy. After 1styear of operation, the academy was handed over to the business and I started researching and scoping the next initiative.

  • Product Development | Operational Excellence | BPM & Design | P&L Management | Budget Management | Business case Development | Application Development | Loyalty Program Design & Management | Machine Learning | Big Data | Digital Content Creation | eLearning Modules | Digital Marketing