Services
InnoMotion helps FMCG companies to scale up innovation and expansion. We have learned over the past years that methodologies to scale up innovation and expansion have a lot in common. We segment growth and its challenge levels in a simple GROWTH CHALLENGE grid:
The Growth Challenge
As a business innovates and expands, the challenges become more difficult the further away the source of growth is from its current core business.
EXISTING
CATEGORY
NEW CATEGORY
/GEOGRAPHY
NEW PRODUCT & SERVICE
INNOVATION
Grow through NPD with existing & new customers based on excellent Category understanding.
INNOVATE & EXPAND
Grow through NPD by expanding into a new geography or an adjacent category.
EXISTING
PRODUCT & SERVICE
CORE BUSINESS
Grow with existing & new customers through continuous improvement, excellent customer service & delivery. Attract new customers through marketing.
EXPANSION
Grow by expanding into a new geography or an adjacent category
As a business innovates and expands, the challenges become more difficult the further away the source of growth is from its current core business. The tougher it gets; the more our expert support will help your business to succeed and grow fast.
The ability of your business to grow by selling more of your innovation, or when expanding into a new geography or adjacent category, hinges on:
Innovation Challenge
Your R&D department has worked hard and developed the innovation, so now is the time to make sure your business creates real value from this opportunity.
InnoMotion experts ensures your business will master the key challenges for achieving success:
- In the launch preparation phase InnoMotion will support getting your organisation ready to ‘Sell your Story & Become Sales Ready‘.
- Fine-tuning propositions in the launch phase to the market and customer requirements with an ‘Insight-Proposition-Product Health Check‘
- A ‘Manufacturing Review‘ will scale up the volume of the production, getting the cost base right for ensuring the innovation is margin accretive. Last, but not least, InnoMotion’s ‘Sales Capability & Plan Delivery‘ supports your business with focused sales & marketing plans. ‘Insight Discovery‘ ensures they are grounded in market reality and our ‘Sales Capability & Plan Delivery‘ ensures they are executed fast.
The first two of these three challenges were neatly summed by Elon Musk in 2021:
Expansion Challenge
Your products are performing great on ‘home turf’ and the time has come to expand into a new geography or an adjacent category.
InnoMotion experts ensure the business will master the key challenges for achieving commercial success:
- Understanding what problems your new target consumer/customers are facing by doing an ‘Insight Discovery‘
- Making sure your proposition is really addressing the issues with an ‘Insight Proposition Product Health Check‘
- Whilst being differentiated from the incumbents.
In the launch preparation phase, InnoMotion will support your organisation getting ‘Sales Ready and Selling Your Story‘. We’ll also help to secure extra manufacturing capacity without diluting margins with a ‘Manufacturing Review‘. Last but not least, ‘Business Development Strategy Expansion‘ will ensure customer focus of your sales team so they can execute fast ‘Sales Capability & Plan Delivery‘.
Analysis, Planning & Support Plan Delivery
Services provided by InnoMotion fall into two broad categories:
- analysis to fine tune or create a strategy, generating clear plans,
- support of plan delivery.
The InnoMotion services outlined below fall predominantly into the analysis and planning stage, because execution support is fully bespoke, i.e. tailored to the specific client needs. Typically, clients will draw on a bespoke cluster of modules, rarely exactly as listed below and usually not all of them at the same time.
Insight Discovery
An insight goes beyond superficial observation to uncover deeper meanings, providing a clear and concise perspective. In the context of FMCG consumers and customers it often refers to an underlying tension which needs to be resolved.
How InnoMotion can help: We set up business operator ‘safaris’, consumer interactions and expert interviews to discover, explore and discuss how they interact and experience a category. This can be followed by expert run workshops to distil these impressions into sharp insights ready for further exploitation by the R&D, Marketing and Sales functions.
Innovation Strategy Development
An innovation strategy is crucial for organisations looking to stay competitive in rapidly changing markets. It helps companies prioritise their innovation activities, align them with their business goals, and ensure that they can effectively bring new and valuable products and services to market. Setting benchmarks and metrics to evaluate the success and impact of innovation efforts is key for long term success.
How InnoMotion can help: We generate a clear articulation of what the business aims to achieve through innovation.
- We help to optimise an existing innovation process which allocates appropriate resources, such as funding, personnel, and time, thus providing a framework for innovation activities. Working with many clients enables to speed up your existing process thus making it more efficient. A headcount increase is rarely required.
- This includes ways of generating and capturing new ideas from within the organization and from external sources and partnering with suitable external organisations.
- The scope can be widened to setting a R&D strategy, which establishes an integrated process for developing and bringing new ideas to market, including stages such as research, development, testing, and commercialisation.
Business Development Strategy
A business development strategy focused on expansion outlines the methods and actions a company will use to grow its operations outside its current core market, mainly into new geographies or adjacent categories, to achieve long-term goals. This strategy encompasses market entry tactics, resource allocation, and partnership development to ensure successful and sustainable expansion.
How InnoMotion can help:
- We conduct a market analysis to identify the target markets, understand its needs and carry out a competitive landscape analysis.
- On the base of simple quant models complementing qualitative approaches, InnoMotion will estimate sales opportunities not just top down, but also customer-based bottom up.
- This will guide setting the objectives, market entry routes and risk management.
Insight-Proposition-Product Health Check
The health check assesses fundamentally whether a product or a service is ‘fit for purpose’. It does this by collating existing insights, reviews how the product is communicated to users (consumers or customers) and whether the product actually performs as promised and most importantly if the ‘performance’ addresses the problem and tension of the insight. The health check is an excellent tool to address underperformance of new initiatives and is best done as soon as serious concerns arise because of underperformance.
How InnoMotion can help: We will set this up, especially the crucial preparation work of collating the evidence, internally and consumer/customer feedback.
- The check will flush out if the market has changed since the early development and therefore the insights hold no longer true.
- Based on the health check outcome, InnoMotion can support the adaption of products or services to meet the specific needs of the target market and/or how it is communicated.
Strategic Partnerships: Innovation & Go To Market
Partnering strategically with other companies, can accelerate innovations and expansion significantly. At the heart of partnering lies true alignment of goals and joint execution delivering mutually beneficial business results.
- Strategic partnership for joint innovation development involves collaborating with external entities to co-create new products, services, or technologies, leveraging shared resources, expertise, and risk to drive mutual growth.
- Partnering for going to market means collaborating with external partners to jointly launch and distribute products or services, leveraging combined strengths for broader market reach and faster entry.
How InnoMotion can help: We identify the needs required from a partner based on your business situation:
- for innovation this can be a supplier or a Go to Market partner
- for expansion it is typically a Go To Market partner.
Based on the analysis InnoMotion will scout the market and present partner options, as well as approach these on behalf of clients. InnoMotion has ample experience drafting header terms for such partnerships.
COGs, Capacity & Pricing
Manufacturing is key for commercial success; however, manufacturing and supply chain can sometimes be treated as an afterthought. Hasty investment decisions, low margins or a lack of capacity can be the result. Innovation and expansion scale up needs to be planned:
- balancing short-term costs, capital investment and elasticity of capacity.
- Make or Buy assessments are proven tools to evaluate outsourcing parts of the supply chain for efficiency whilst volumes are still low. They will help to commit capital expenditure at the right time, i.e. when the true potential of the expansion or innovation opportunity is validated in market.
How InnoMotion can help:
- We perform a detailed analysis of all costs associated with manufacturing the product, including raw materials, labour, and overheads.
- A Make or Buy assessment will guide the capital investment decision and timing.
- InnoMotion supports setting volume-based pricing strategies to ensure that the product
Selling Story & Sales Ready
A selling story is a structured narrative that highlights a product’s unique value proposition, addressing customer needs and pain points, to persuade and engage buyers, ultimately driving purchase decisions. It is also proven that well prepared launches are much more likely to deliver the desired growth results.
How InnoMotion can help:
- We will craft an insight-based selling stories whilst ensuring at the same time the organisation is truly sales-ready. The insight-based approach focuses on customer benefits, not just product features.
- As distilling the selling story requires communication with most functions, it is a perfect opportunity to check ‘sales ready: verifying product specs, regulatory compliance, sufficient quality samples and reliable dispatch methods, production capacity and clear pricing.
Sales Plan & Delivery
A sales plan based on a quantitative customer model priorities sales activities thus focussing for the sales team. A good and well-trained sales team will be confident in their delivery increasing the value creation.
How InnoMotion can help:
- We create sales models and training modules.
- We involve the sales team early to ensure buy-in and have developed many concise Selling Story trainings focused on customer challenges and needs.
- InnoMotion often acquires the initial, new customers, paving the way for the sales team to develop the customers further.